An Empirical Study On The Components Of Retail Store Brand Image

Brand image is the core competitiveness of brand equity. The brand competitiveness is the very core competence of the enterprise. Strong brand image can reduce the risk perception of consumers during their shopping process, and thus to improve their satisfaction and loyalty. As an important competitive advantage, a good brand image can bring strong brand equity and provide a basis for the brand extension. Retail store brand image refers to the conception of whole environment for consumers to go shopping, which can exert a significant influence on the consumer's decision-making behavior. Through the one year internship experience in Wansheng Department Store in Shenzhen, I have knowledge of brand culture and brand image about retail mall, So we choose retail brand image as our research objective.At present, most of the studies on the brand image take tangible products as an example, and only few of them are about the service sector. Moreover, from the research methods perspective, we found that most of the scholars have identified the components of brand image mainly through literature review; this may lead to the omission of some of the important image factors. Image lay in consumers'minds; only by empirical research can we identify the component of brand image and the important factors. This study aimed to identify the constructs of the retail brand image from the consumer's perspective, develop the retail brand image model and a retail brand scale which may do some help to the brand building and management.This research is an empirical research. Through the interviews on scholars and experts and explorative testing, the research questionnaire is developed. And then it is revised through an explorative investigation and the related analysis by statistical software. Using the final questionnaire, an investigation was made, resulting in 361 effective samples. We had a focus group interview and conducted a questionnaire survey in Wanzhong Community, Yintai Industry Area, Niulanqian Community and Foxconn Industry Area, identified the components of retail brand image from the consumer perspective by a standard empirical research. Based on the statistical analysis of the survey data, we found that the retail brand image is a multidimensional concept, which is composed of "enterprise organization image", "equipments", "product quality", "presentation ", "product price ", "shopping convenience ", "store atmosphere " and "Propaganda promotion", we also found that there are close links among these dimensions.We identify the components of retail brand image from the consumer perspective by a standard empirical research, the findings can be considered as supplementary to the brand theory. At the same time, we develop a retail brand image model and a retail brand image scale, which may do some help for the brand building and management of local retail enterprises, The limitations of the study are discussed and suggestions for future research are offered.