SYMBOLIC AND FUNCTIONAL BRAND EFFECTS FOR MARKET SEGMENTATION

This study investigates the interrelationships among brand personality, brand preference, customer perceived value, and golfers’ performance in the context of Taiwan’s golf clubs market. The theoretical and statisticalrelationships among these constructs are developed and verified. Using survey data from 345 out of 1,000 randomly selected golfers, this study employs ANOVA, Factor Analysis, and Discriminant Analysis to examine the research hypotheses. The findings reveal that (1) notable brand personality factors including Reliability, Fashion, Masculine, Excitement, Wholesome, Leadership, Sentiment, Feminine, and Uniqueness could explain brand preference to a large extent, (2) golfers’ customer perceived value regarding various golf brands areconsiderably dissimilar, and (3) golfers’ deviation in performance significantly relates to brands. In addition to conventional bases for market segmentation (i.e., demographics, psychographics, lifestyles, etc.), this paper clearly provides practical guidelines of implementing brand personality for market segmentation and promotionstrategies. Brand personality proves to be a useful segmenting variable. The findings and the statistical results offer supportive evidence for implementing appropriate branding management on both functional (i.e., customer perceived value and performance) and emotional attributes (i.e., brand personality) in order to enhance competitiveness.