Determinants of fashion store personality: a consumer perspective Malaika Brengman Vrije Universiteit Brussels, Brussels, Belgium, and Kim Willems Hasselt University and Vrije Universiteit Brussels, Brussels, Belgium Abstract Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to identify the main determinants of fashion store personality, as perceived by the shopper. It aims to discover factors that are responsible for specific store personality trait perceptions in order to understand how these humanlike personality traits are induced in a retailing context. Design/methodology/approach – With this end in mind, a qualitative exploratory study was undertaken. A total of 70 in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with a convenience sample of Belgian adult respondents to systematically assess the connotations of the 34 different store personality trait descriptors put forward by d’Astous and Le ´vesque. Respondents were asked which fashion stores they considered to embody these specific personality traits and they were probed for the sources of inference they used. Findings – The findings reveal that the store environment and store design particularly is an important factor in determining the personality of fashion stores. Also, other factors such as corporate social responsibility, reputation, service level, the salespeople, the merchandise sold, price/quality perceptions and the consumer base determine perceptions of “genuineness”, “solidity”, “sophistication”, “enthusiasm” and “unpleasantness”. Practical implications – A better understanding of the determinants of fashion store personality is essential for retail managers who wish to (re)position their stores. Retailers and store designers should be aware of the important role of “atmospherics” in this regard. Originality/value – Apart from conceptual work, no empirical research has yet systematically investigated determinants of each of the main store personality dimensions. Keywords Store ambience, Fashion industry, Qualitative research, Perception, Belgium Paper type Research paper 1. Introduction and background Martineau already introduced the concept of store personality (SP) five decades ago, describing it as: “the way in which the store is defined in the shopper’s mind, partly by its functional qualities and partly by an aura of psychological attributes” (Martineau, 1958, p. 47). Although academic attention has traditionally always focused on the functional store image attributes, the often ignored, more humanlike characteristics of a store also seem to influence several retail performance indicators. The characteristics of being “agreeable” and “ruthless”, for example, have been shown to affect customer satisfaction (Chun and Davies, 2006). Personality traits, such as “chic” and “enterprising” appear promising bases for successful retail differentiation (Azoulay and Kapferer, 2003; Chun and Davies, 2006). The power of these durable brand personality traits in the consumer’s mind springs from the human need to simplify buying decisions by creating symbolic representations (Lindquist, 1974-1975) that serve as a decision heuristic in situations of uncertainty (Stern et al., 2001). Moreover, it has empirically been proven that the attribution of human characteristics provides a much more concrete perception of a commercial object than the rather volatile concept of image (see Caprara et al., 1998). 2. Building store personality Although the importance of “store personality” in retail branding is indisputable (Ailawadi and Keller, 2004; Hartman and Spiro, 2005; Zentes et al., 2008), it is still not quite clear what determines a store’s personality or how retailers should go about building it. Garton (1995, p. 30) remarks that “many of the results in store personality studies are too general to be of use to retail managers”. Despite the rather scarce scholarly input on the sources of inference used to attribute certain personality characteristics to a store, such information is nevertheless crucial in building store personality. According to Aaker (1997), brand personality attributions are based on person-related associations (i.e. perceived personality traits of people associated with a brand come to describe the brand’s personality, e.g. typical user) and product-related associations and inferences (see also Bosnjak The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/1061-0421.htm Journal of Product & Brand Management 18/5 (2009) 346–355 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited [ISSN 1061-0421] [DOI 10.1108/10610420910981828] The authors would like to thank their colleagues who attended the 4th International Colloquium of the Academy of Marketing’s Brand, Corporate Identity and Reputation Special Interest Group. Particularly the feedback and suggestions by Professor Dr F. Guzma ´n, Professor Dr O. Iglesias, Dr M.-N. Liao, and the two anonymous reviewers have proven useful in improving this paper. 346