The Moderating Role Of Individual Differences On Brand Preference Change

In this drastic competition of market, consumers had to expose to varied information about brand's flaws. Did consumers process this information in the same way? Did they make the same evaluation of the same information? The consumers changed or changed not their preference after they known information about brand's flaws. If both of the answers exist, which factors made consumers change their preference? Did characteristic differentia play some role in this process? Past research made the focus on the excellent information, but they had no idea about the influence the brand's flaws make on consumers. Since we found the links between these factors, we could forecast effectively how the consumers change their preference and provided the proof for crisis management.This article explained the reason that brand's flaw make influence on consumer's preference change based on the theory of cognitive dissonance. According to past research in this domain, it proposed that four variables, including brand commitment, self-esteem, self-monitoring and self-confidence of consumer to brand, had influences on preference change. Aiming at the student, samples object, we examined the consumers change or change not their preference and whether characteristic differentia could be identified as a moderator of the effects.The study issued 402 questionnaires around nationwide. Research instruments included Brand Preference Scale, Consumer commitment Scale, Self-Esteem Scale, Self-Monitoring Scale and Self-Confidence of Consumer to Brand Scale. Different level of brand's flaw was also designed in the questionnaire. Factor Analysis, Cluster Analysis, and Paired-Samples T Test, One-way ANOVA were used to test the effect of variables (such as consumer commitment and brand's flaws) on brand preference change. And the moderator role (such as self-esteem, self-monitoring and self-confidence of consumer to brand) was also tested.The findings of the study provided a theoretical framework for understanding how consumers process information of brand's flaw in the marketplace. Although commitment of the consumer toward the brand could be a good predictor of consumer's preference change, characteristic differentia (such as self-esteem, self-monitoring and self-confidence of consumer to brand) was identified as a moderator of information of brand's flaw effects in this process.In the study, we demonstrated some conclusions as follow.1) Because of negativity effect, low-commitment consumers exhibited a greater amount of preference change in response to information about brand's flaws as compared with high-commitment consumers.2) When the level of brand's flaw is high and consumers' commitment is low, consumers who are high in self-esteem exhibited a greater amount of preference change in response to information about brand's flaws as compared with consumers who are low in self-esteem. Because consumers who are high in self-esteem is risk-avoiding.3)No matter how grave the brand's flaw is, consumers who are low in self-monitoring were more easily to change preference in response to information about brand's flaws as compared with consumers who are high in self-monitoring. Because consumers who are low in self-monitoring evaluate the performance of product in terms of the actual performance of the product.4) When the level of brand's flaw is high and consumers' commitment is high, consumers who are high in self-confidence to brand exhibited a less amount of preference change in response to information about brand's flaws as compared with consumers who are low in self-confidence to brand. Because consumers who are high in self-confidence to brand had the motivation and ability to resist preference change through three ways (biased assimilation, relative weighting of attributes, and minimization of impact).