Consumer-Brand Relationship's Continuance

With the competition picking up and the customer contest cost rising in the consumermarket, the developing and protecting good relationship with the consumer has become theenterprise's important strategy to win the market. In the meanwhile, as homogeneity ofproducts and consumer's pursuing personality, emotion and diversification are being stronger,brand has increasingly become the focus of the consumer, and the bond between the consumerand the brand. Therefore, it is necessary for the enterprise to consider from the strategyperspective how to make and maintain the good consumer-brand relationships in order tostrengthen the survival and developing competence. How to maintain the consumer-brandrelationships has been the focus of the attentions in theory and practice. The currentresearches on the consumer-brand relationships' continuance focused either of the consumersatisfaction or the brand loyalty or the switching cost, but the consumer satisfaction or thebrand loyalty or the switching cost can not generally explain the phenomena about theconsumer-brand relationship's continuance in the life. They did not explore completely theessence of the consumer-brand relationship's continuance. Further, the current researches didnot empirically study the factors affecting the consumer-brand relationship's continuance andits mechanisms. So based on the previous researches, this thesis, combining theoreticalanalysis with empirical research, tries to explore the essence and the mechanism of theconsumer-brand relationship's continuance from the consumer's perspective, and tries toanswer the two questions the academic researchers and practitioners put the most attentions to:why can the consumer-brand relationship be maintained? And what factors drive theconsumer-brand relationship's continuance and how do they drive?Based on the systematical research work, the main conclusions are as follows: (1)The consumer commitment is the essence of the consumer-brand relationship's continuance. The consumer commitment has two components: consumer's emotional commitment and consumer's continual commitment. The former explores the reason that the consumer stays the current consumer-brand relationship from the consumer's emotional motivation perspective, and the later from the consumer's economic motivation perspective. Empirical analyses indicate that the consumer commitment (including consumer's emotional commitment and the consumer's continual commitment) both make positive effects on theconsumer-brand relationship's continuance. (5)The consumer-brand relationship's continuance is an action outcome of many factors drive synthetically. Empirical analyses indicate: five factors identified in this thesis with the approach combining systematically theoretical analysis and qualitative research all have a direct or indirect influence on the consumer-brand relationship's continuance. They are relationship satisfaction, perceived brand value, relationship bond, brand involvement and perceived switching cost. ?There are three different ways driving the consumer-brand relationship's continuance. The result of the Structural Equations Modeling (SEM) analysis demonstrates that there are three different ways driving the consumer-brand relationship's continuance: the emotional driving way based on the consumer's emotional motivation, the negatively rational driving way based on the consumer's economical motivation and the positively rational driving way based on the consumer's economical motivation.The innovation of this thesis includes: (T)This research is the first one that systematically explores the essence of the consumer-brand relationship's continuance, and validate that it is the consumer's commitment, which provides a strong theoretical tool to comprehend the essence of the consumer-brand relationship's continuance. ?This research use two basic theories (Social Exchange Theory and Investment Model Theory) for reference, combining qualitative analysis, to identify the factors affecting the consumer-brand relationship's continuance, which provides this field with a new perspective. ?This research use the Structural Equations Modeling (SEM) approach to discover the three different ways driving the consumer-brand relationship's continuance, which can answer the question about the mechanism of the consumer-brand relationship's continuance more completely and systematically.