The Research On The Effect Of Brand Image On Perceived Value And Customer Satisfaction

In a highly competitive market environment, customer satisfaction has been recognized as the chief precondition of enterprise to actualize competition predominance. The most important objective for the company is to satisfy its customers. Since Cardozo introduced the concept of customer satisfaction into marketing for the first time in 1965, customer satisfaction has been widely paid attention to. Due to the importance of customer satisfaction concept, lots of researches have been widely studied on the relationship between customer perceived value and customer satisfaction. In the newly-introduced China Customer Satisfaction model, brand image, together with perceived quality, customer expectation are the antecedents of perceived value and affect customer satisfaction.Many empirical studies have focused on the relationship between brand image and customer satisfaction, and has got a relative consistent conclusion, that is, brand image has a positive effect on customer satisfaction. However, it is not enough only to pay attention to the relationship between brand image and customer satisfaction, we also need to focus on customer value, which really starts from customers and study customers'psychologies.Therefore, we should study the effect of brand image on both perceived value and customer satisfaction. Scholars researched on this topic, however, there is lack of empirical study. And there is little research based on the Chinese economic situation, therefore, litter empirical research has focused on the Chinese Durable Consumer Goods sector.Based on the literature review and actual observations, we propose the necessary to study the relationship among brand image, perceived value and customer satisfaction, and then we constructed the conceptual model for them. The following hypotheses are presented and tested: brand image has a direct positive impact on perceived value; perceived value has a direct positive impact on customer satisfaction; brand image has a direct positive impact on customer satisfaction. In order to test those hypotheses, our study takes the computer customers as the research objective; I get 209 samples through convenience samples. The test of reliability and validity for all scales that we used, show that all scales have certain reliability and validity, they are the valid measures for brand image, perceived value and customer satisfaction. The descriptive analysis showed that the sample has a good representation for the population, and the distribution of the sample is similar to normal distribution, it is suitable for the structure relationship test.The AMOS software was used for analysis.The main conclusions of this study include: First, brand image has a direct positive impact on customer perceived value. This conclusion indicates brand image can be as an antecedence of customer perceived value; the improvement of brand image will lead to the improvement of customer perceived value. This conclusion indicates that brand image is so important in computer industry that companies should do their best to create good brand image. Among dimensions of brand image, product image does much more effect on customer perceived value than company image.Second, customer perceived value has a direct positive impact on customer satisfaction. It is consistent with many scholar researches.Third, brand image has a direct positive impact on customer satisfaction. This conclusion indicates brand image can also be as an antecedence of customer satisfaction, the improvement of brand image will lead to the improvement of customer satisfaction. This conclusion gives a direction for computer companies to improve their customer satisfaction. Finally, this article proposed some suggestions for future research:First, research the customer satisfaction in the market of other areas ofChina. There are lots of differences among different areas in economic level, local culture and the level of development in computer industry, but our research can just represent the cities in northeastern part of China. So it's valuable to research this issue in south of China.Second, develop a better measure of brand image in China. Although we can use the scale of brand image that developed in another country, but several researchers find that because the difference in country, market environment, culture and development in economic, the application of brand image theories are different. So we should develop a better measure of brand image in China, it will help us to understand and interpret brand image for Chinese company better.Do research on other sectors in Durable Consumer Goods industry. Although the scales used in this paper is suitable to Durable Consumer Goods industry, every industry has its own peculiarities, and the conclusions from the computer industry can not be fully applicable to other industries. We should do research on other industries. So we can know more about the relationship between brand image, perceived value and customer satisfaction in different industries.Research other factors of customer satisfaction. We have researched the effect of brand image and perceived value on customer satisfaction; however, this can not explain all the reasons for customer satisfaction. There are various factors that can do influence on customer satisfaction, such as perceived performance, customer expectation, perceived quality, etc. So in the future research, we should put all these factors in a model. Thus we can provide more comprehensive suggestions for companies.