Trust And Marketing Strategies

With the spread of economic globalization in the21st century, more and more multinational companies have participated in the increasingly fierce competition in the global market. Facing with differences in market growth degree and cultural values among various countries, establishment of effective marketing strategies contributes to an accurate grasp of consumer psychology, achieves multiplier effect, and thus becomes the critical factor in the success of multinational companies.This article follows the research thought of "marketing strategy (external stimuli)---trust (personal characteristics)---propensity to purchase (reaction)" Based on the theoretical foundation like stimulus-response theory, consumer behavior theory, social exchange theory and so on, this study starts with the difference of trust between two countries which share different cultural backgrounds, then focuses on the different purchase intentions from consumers in China and Germany towards various marketing strategies (function-oriented, trust-oriented, relationship oriented), and measures the moderating effect that trust plays, with the help of literature research, experimental research, survey research, and statistical methods like factor analysis, analysis of variance, and regression analysis. Main conclusions of this study are as follows:(1) Verify that German show higher trust towards strangers than Chinese by measuring the trust of German and Chinese towards strangers.(2) Explore different effect that various marketing strategies have on consumers from countries with different trust characteristics. The results shows that function-oriented strategy, trust-oriented stratey and relationship-oriented strategy all have active effect in stimulating purchase intention. Specifically, function-oriented strategy has higher impact on high-trust countries (Germany) than low-trust countries (China), while trust-oriented strategy and relationship-oriented strategy have higher impact on low-trust countries (China) than high-trust countries (Germany). Meanwhile, it turns out that trust, which represents the cultural feature, plays the moderating role in the relationship between marketing strategy and purchase intention.(3) Verify that among consumers from low-trust countries (China), trust-oriented marketing strategy and relationship-oriented marketing strategy have higher influence than function-oriented marketing strategy, and the new products from extrepreneurial companies gain lower purchase intention than new products or mature products from mature companies.All in all, this is an exploratory study. The conclusion contributes to a better understanding of psychological mechanism of consumer behavior to some extent, enriches and improves cross-cultural marketing theory, trust-related theory, stimulus-response theory, social exchange theory and relative consumer behavior theory, and also helps ro guide multinational companies with their management and practice of marketing activities.