An Empirical Study On The Impact Mechanism Of Customer Psychological Contract On Brand Loyalty

Today, the brand has been penetrated into every corner of our lives and which has been become a major orientation and competent of our consumption. Building and maintaining long-term relationship between customer and brand is become the important goal that every enterprise strives for, and it is the fundamental guarantee for the sustainable development of enterprises. However, the essence of brand is the match of the value orientation between enterprise and customer, that is, agreement on mutual interest and recognition on mutual cultural values. The pioeess of a brand building is a process of psychological contract constructing. Some research indicating that true customer brand loyalty is a psychological state, and there is a psychological contract between customer and brand. The quality of the relationship will be greatly affected if the psychological contract breached. Therefore, it is very necessary to add the variable of psychological contract to the framework of Relationship Marketing and study the mechanism of customer brand loyalty. But the research of customer psychological contract appears the following characteristics:(1) about the study objects, the vast majority of studies are to service;(2) about the study methods, the vast majority of studies are qualitative;(3) about the study results, there is the same conclusion of the effect about the psychological contract to the customer brand loyalty. However, there is lack of the study on the transmission mechanism and some differences of Psychological Contract Dimension of customer. Therefore, this study is to further the improvement study on the psychological contract and brand loyalty (brand relationships). It is mainly reflected in two aspects:Firstly, the author will conduct in-depth study on the customer psychological contract content and dimension. Although, there is more than ten years of history of the research of the psychological contract, we can conclude that the most studies on customer psychological contract is to B2B or B2C services and there is the lack of study on customer psychological contract to product brand. As we known, there are many differences between product and service. Therefore, this paper focuses on the customer psychological contract of products (skin care) brand, and gives a rich exposition to the theory.Secondly, the author wills depth-study the mechanism of customer psychological contract influence brand loyalty. There are some studies on the direct relationship between customer psychological contract and brand loyalty, and not research the mediators and moderators. Viewing from the literature review, the mediators are customer perceived value, customer satisfaction, customer trust, and the moderator is the switching costs. Therefore, this study will increase these variables and do a more comprehensive research on the mechanism.In order to systematically expound the basic proportion, the paper is divided into the following section:Chapter one is the general which provides an introduction to the background of study and why study the subject, topics and relevant of study, path and framework of study, contribution and shortcomings, and lets people have a general understanding of main idea and content of the paper.Chapter two provides an introduction to common of literature and framework of analysis. The theory of psychological contract, brand relationship, brand loyalty, customer perceived value, brand satisfaction, brand trust, brand switching costs and related variables were reviewed and commented.Chapter three provides an introduction to the research design and methods. Based on the literature review, this chapter determines the research ideas and theoretical framework, hypothesis, measurement tools and data analysis methods and takes the pre-test.In Chapter four, the paper provides a detailed introduction to customer psychological contract scale development and test. As the scale and the structure of psychological contract is the main innovation and an important contribution, the author took a specialized comprehensive study on the psychological contract consumers in the chapter fourth.Chapter five is data analysis and hypothesis testing. In this chapter, the author uses the methods of descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, variance analysis, and hierarchical regression analysis and structural equation model through the SPSS13.0and AMOS7.0software, and makes empirical test to these hypotheses.Chapter six is the conclusion and outlook. In this chapter, the research conclusions are be refined and summarized. On this basis, the author proposed appropriate management strategies, and pointed out the innovation, limitations and prospects.Through this research, the author draws the following main ideas:1. The conclusion of customer psychological contract on content and dimensions of structure. In this study, the customer psychological contract can be divided into three sections:norm psychological contract, interpersonal psychological contract, and development psychological contract.2. The conclusion of the effect of customer psychological contract. This study investigated the influence to the relevant variables about psychological contract and its different dimensions. The results show that the customer psychological contract has significant positive effects on customer perceived value, customer brand satisfaction, and customer brand trust and customer brand loyalty. However, the different dimension of the customer psychological contract has different effect on the related variable.3. The conclusion of the mediator of customer perceived value, customer brand satisfaction and customers brand trust between customer psychological contract and brand loyalty. The research results show that customer perceived value, customer brand satisfaction and customer brand trust plays part mediating effect between the psychological contract and customer brand loyalty. And in same time, the customer perceived value has a positive effect on customer brand satisfaction, customer brand trust and customer brand loyalty, and customer brand satisfaction also has a positive effect on customer brand trust and customer brand loyalty.4. The conclusion of the regulating effect of brand switching cost. The research results show that, in addition to the relationship between customer perceived value and brand loyalty, the brand switching cost has a significant effect on the relationships between the customer psychological contract, customer brand satisfaction, customer brand trust and customer brand loyalty5. The conclusion of factors of customer psychological contract. In this study, the research result shows that there is no significant discrepancy to customer psychological contract for the difference of demographic variables and purchase behavior variables. It indicates that the customer psychological contract has a certain stability and universality.