Study On The Mechanism Of Formation And Change Of Dual Brand Impression

Brand impression is defined as a part or overall effect of brand in consumer’smind based on his or her perception and experience of the brand stereotypes andindividuation information and which is considered as the basis of the relationshipbetween brand and consumers. With the development of emerging implicit socialcognition research, it is suggested that the researches of social cognition should berediscussed from two different aspects (i.e. explicit and implicit) in order to providericher and more full comprehensive explanation for understanding human behavior.Based on the dual-process model, the dissertation further analyses the structure,formation and change of brand impression from the two aspects of explicit andimplicit.In the theoretical analysis section of the present dissertation, the author firstproposes the definition of brand impression after analyzing and summarizing therelationship between brand impression and brand image, the measurement model ofbrand image and the theory of brand impression formation, then the author reviewsdual-process model after summarizing the development of dual-process model andanalyzing how these processes predict behavior. At last, the author summarizes thedevelopment of indirect measurement technique. Based on the literature of brandimpression and dual-process model, the empirical research is composed of four parts.The conclusions are showed in details as following:The first part is the empirical study of explicit brand impression. Chinesecitizen’s brand impression has been investigated by using the methods of BehavioralEvent Interview and questionnaire in study1. With a multi-step study to develop andvalidate a multidimensional brand impression scale, the empirical results indicate thatthe structure of brand impression includes four factors such as brand qualityimpression, brand communication impression, brand service impression and brandprice impression. Multi-step psychometric tests demonstrate that the brand impressionmultidimensional scale which includes15items is reliable and valid, the scale ofsingle item for every dimension and the scale of single item are also.The second part is the empirical study of the relationship between explicit andimplicit brand impression. With73undergraduates and postgraduates as the subjects,study1, study2and study3explore the nature of explicit brand impression andimplicit brand impression and the relationship between them from a perspective oftwo indirect measures which include the Implicit Association Test (IAT) and the Stereotypic Explanatory Bias (SEB).Study1investigates the country-of-origin effect of brand impression withexplicit brand impression scale, the results reveal that the explicit impression ofquality, communication, service and general impression of domestic brand is worsethan that of American brand, while the explicit impression of the price is better thanthat of foreign brand; the general impression and the quality impression of domesticbrand are significant positive predictors of domestic brand purchase willingness; thecommunication and price impression of American brand are significant positivepredictors of American brand purchase willingness.IAT is used in study2and the results show that compared with American brand,Chinese consumers have more positive implicit impression on domestic brand; IATshows no significant correlation with explicit brand impression. SEB is used in study3and the results show that the correlation among general SEB, IAT and explicit brandimpression are on significant; whether E-SEB or I-SEB score can reflect implicitbrand impression in more detail than general SEB score; the implicit brand impressioncorrespond to traditional cognitive customs. The reason why the implicit brandimpression measured by IAT is inconsistent with which measured by SEB maybe dueto the two different indirect measures reflecting different aspects of complex netconnection of memory.The third part is the research of brand impression formation and change which isbased on dual-process model. The findings of the first two parts indicate that explicitand implicit brand impression maybe follow their own processing mechanismrespectively because the explicit brand impression shows no significant correlationwith implicit one. To investigate this issue, the current work examines thepsychological mechanism by which new brand impression is formed and changed.The results of two studies show that explicit brand impression is independent fromimplicit one; Following rule-based procession, the forming and change of explicitbrand impression are developed by fast-learning memory system; Whereas implicitbrand impression forming and change follow association procession and aredeveloped by slow-learning memory system; In information processing individualdifference in brand involvement has much to offer dual-process accounts of brandimpression formation and change, incorporating this individual difference intodual-process theories will provide a stronger, more coherent account of humanbehavior.The forth part is on the research of brand impression influencing consumerbehavior. At first, in order to improve the ecological validity of the research, the realbrands in life replace the fictitious ones to be used in study which aims to explore dual brand’s country-of-origin stereotypes and how national sentiment influence brand’scountry-of-origin stereotypes. The results show that the national sentiment aroused bydirect persuasion couldn’t change the explicit brand’s country-of-origin stereotypes,but the national sentiment aroused by indirect persuasion could make the explicitgeneral impression on domestic brand of hybrid products more positive; Consumer’simplicit brand’s country-of-origin stereotypes couldn’t be changed by either direct orindirect persuasion. Secondly, the author takes consumer ethnocentrism (CE) as theindependent variable, brand purchase willingness as the dependent variables, andbrand impression as the moderating variable, and then examines the role of brandimpression in relationship between CE and brand purchase willingness. The resultsshow that explicit general impression of domestic brand plays positive moderatingrole in the relationship between CE and purchase willingness of domestic brand, whileimplicit brand impression plays negative moderating role in the relationship betweenCE and purchase willingness of domestic brand.In the general discussion and conclusion, according to a series of empiricalstudies, this dissertation concludes and analyzes the findings, lists some disadvantagesof the study, and put forward future prospects.