Restrictions on the use of the Aaker model in the measurement of city brand personality: The sender's perspective

The aim of this article is to explore the limitations of the extensibility of the Aaker's brand personality framework to small and medium-sized city branding. Previous research with similar aims focused on the measurement of perceiving city brand personality dimensions from the recipient's perspective. This article adopts the perspective of 'senders' in the city branding process, thus focusing on the projected city brand personality. The results of a survey among managers responsible for the promotion of Polish towns/cities revealed that the Aaker model of brand personality is not adequate to describe the personality of cities' brands. Apart from disregarding certain city personality dimensions existing in their branding strategies (as desired by cities marketers), the Aaker model incorporates dimensions that are absent in desired images of cities brands. © 2016 Macmillan Publishers Ltd.