Consumer Brand Trust

ChengXin has become hot topic and important research field recently. In order to rebuild consumers' trust, focal firm should not only re-insight their actions, but also consider from the perspective of customers. Why do consumer trust a firm. In B2C field, consumers seldom contact with firm directly. They could perceive a brand. So the question turns to "why do consumer trust a brand?"It's not only an urgent practical question, but also a novel theoretical research question. To this ends, this paper deals with three basic questions by employing empirical study.Firstly, the definition and measurement for brand trust (chapter 2). Trust depends on situation. As to brand trust, reviewing existing researches related trust is useful to understand trust background. It's more important to explore its meaning from consumers. So, the author conduct plentiful qualitative interview among consumers based on the literature review. This paper defines brand trust as consumer's confident attitude to a certain brand among brands, including trust in capability and performance (CPT), benevolence and integrity (BIT), and overall trust (OT) .As to the precondition, this paper distinguishes risk in brand level from risk in product category level, and focuses this research on brand level; confident attitude reflects positive meaning, implies expectation and prediction; brand trust includes three dimensions, and there are relationship among these three dimensions. Collecting data in fridge, the author proves that 1) brand trust includes three dimensions, 2) CPT and BIT influence OT; CPT influences BIT. The results show that the measurement for brand trust is reliability and validity.Secondly, this paper constructs brand-trust-building model based on the qualitative research and literature review (chapter 3). Consumer trusts certain brand by three mechanisms and five variables. Collecting data in cosmetic, the focal research tests the model by SEM in LISREL. The results presents that 1) experience mechanism play important role on trust building. Customer satisfaction affects all three dimensions, and perceived quality influence CPT. 2) calculation mechanism plays secondary role. Perceived risk work on both CPT and BIT. Economic value affects BIT only. The role of brand reputation is not proved in this research.At last, this research intends to build the model of the influence of brand trust onbrand loyalty (chapter 4). This research proposed that brand trust and customer satisfaction affect brand loyalty directly, and perceived quality and economic value work on brand loyalty indirectly. Collecting data in cosmetic, the focal research tests the model by SEM in LISREL. The analysis results are 1) brand trust is the most important antecedent of brand loyalty, and more important than customer satisfaction, and 2) brand trust and customer satisfaction influence brand loyalty directly, and perceived quality and economic value influence indirectly.The innovation of this paper includes: 1) defining brand trust in Chinese as CPT, BIT and OT, and demonstrating the relationship among the three dimensions, 2) combining the processing method and antecedent method, constructing and proving the model of three mechanisms and antecedents, 3) testing the effect of brand trust on brand loyalty, building an integrated model, comparing the influence of brand trust, customer satisfaction, economic value and perceived quality on brand trust, and providing this field with a new perspective.