Is brand personality an antecedent to quality perceptions?

The specific question that this exploratory paper sought to answer within the globally competitive higher education context was: do the basic brand personality perceptions of sincerity, excitement and competence, once location and aspirational brand personality perceptions of sophistication and ruggedness are controlled for, explain variation in perceptions of quality? The results from this study suggest that quality is influenced by an individual's perceptions of the university's competence. Such initial research as this should be seen as providing early insights that need further replication. For managers responsible for creating university brand images it seems that for postgraduate business students studying in Australia and in the UK, messages of dependability and achievement, that is competence, are more important than those of sophistication.