Exploring The Relationship Between Retailer’s Image And Private Label Brand Purchasing-The Moderating Effect Of Trust Propensity And Face Consciousness

The appearance of private label brand is the outcome of modern retailing industry’s development and transferring of channel power. Private label brand could bring higher profit rate and customer loyalty, and also enhance retailer’s competitive power, so developing private label brand has become a main trend of current retailing industry. When compared with European and American retailing market, private label brand’s market share is relatively low in China. This is due to Chinese retailing industry’s backwardness and also Chinese social and cultural characteristics. Which factor will affect consumer’s buying private label brand and how, it’s a research issue of both academic and practical meaning.On the basis of literature review, the author proposed a research model and relevant hypotheses on how two dimensions of retailer image affect consumer’s perceived value and purchase intention, and consumer’s trust propensity and face consciousness play as moderators in this model. The author adopted mature scales to measure all the variables in the research and design questionnaire. The questionnaires were handed out via online and offline, and finally 187 valid questionnaires were received. Data were analyzed by SPSS and Lisrel to test all hypotheses. The hypotheses testing outcome shows that both retailer’s brand image and store image will positively affect consumer’s perceived value for private label brand, and so as from perceived value to purchase intention. Consumer’s trust propensity will positively affect relationship between brand image and perceived value and face consciousness will negatively affect relationship between perceived value and purchase intention. Based on the research findings the author proposed three marketing suggestions for developing Chinese retailers’private label brand and also future research directions in this area.