A Study Of The Association Of Field-Independence/Dependence Cognitive Style And Foreign /Domestic Brands By Implicit Method

After China's accession to the World Trade Organization, the competition between foreign brands and domestic brands is becoming more and more intense in China. Domestic brands will have a good development in the future, which mainly depends on whether the domestic brands win the consumers' preference. Therefore, psychologists pay more attention to doing research about consumers'brands preference about domestic and foreign brands. The paper aims to uncover field independence and field dependence college students'implicit preference about domestic brands and foreign brands with Implicit Association Test.The research is divided into two parts. The first one is the evaluation of The Group Embedded Figures Test, which was used to differentiate student's field cognitive styles, field dependent or field independent. The second one includes two Implicit Association Tests. The first IAT is to study field independence and field dependence college students'implicit preference about domestic brands and foreign brands with Implicit Association Test. The second IAT is to testify whether field independence and field dependence college students change their implicit preference about domestic brands and foreign brands after subjects being offered a positive report about domestic brands and negative report about foreign brands.The purpose of the second research is to prove the following hypothesis:1. Compared to the domestic brands, foreign brands are generally favored by field independent/dependent college students.2. Field dependence college students prefer foreign brands to domestic brands. Field independent college students have not obvious preference between foreign brands and domestic brands.3. When subjects are offered a positive report about domestic brands and negative report about foreign brands, field dependence subjects' implicit preference could be influenced while field independence subjects'implicit preference couldn't be influenced. According to the result of this test and pre-research, we can get the conclusion as follows:1. Compared to the foreign brands, domestic brands are generally favored by field independent/dependent college students.2. Field independent college students have not obvious preference between foreign brands and domestic brands. Field dependence college students prefer domestic brands to foreign brands.3. Whether he/she is field dependence student or field independent students, his/her implicit preference about domestic/foreign brands hasn't changed after him/her being offered a positive report about domestic brands and negative report about foreign brands.