Background: The higher education sector has become more competitive and universities are now more actively engaged in branding. One way of branding is to utilise the concept of brand personality, which can be measured and adjusted with the help of the University Brand Personality Scale (UBPS).  However, much emphasis is put solely on measuring and adjusting while little emphasis is being put on how to actually achieve the intended brand outcome.

Purpose: To research university brand personality from the perspective of students, the UBPS will be adapted. It consists of six intangible dimensions of brand personality. So-called subcomponents for each dimension will be found and evaluated. These subcomponents constitute tangible and intangible attributes that, from a students’ perspective, relate to the UBPS dimensions. This research sets out to help researchers as well as practitioners to better understand university brand personality in all its facets.

Method: The chosen research method is an exploratory study utilising a multi-method, qualitative research approach as well as thematic analysis. This has been done through conducting a case study at Jönköping University, Sweden. In a first step, focus groups were used to identify an item pool of subcomponents. In a second step, interviews were conducted to determine which of these subcomponents are the most important ones to students and why.

Conclusion:  The outcome of this research is an insightful adaption of the UBPS from the perspective of students, which can be used to guide further research as well as practitioners who work with university branding. A broad item pool has been generated, containing subcomponents for each of the UBPS dimensions. The motivations behind these items has been researched while identifying the most important ones to create the final adaption of the model.