The Mechanism Of Knowledge-sharing In Rural Community On Farmer’s Brand Switching Intention

Nowadays the products are patchy and there are a variety of brands in the agricultural production means market of our country. When buying agricultural production means, a lot of farmers show low brand loyalty and switch the brand frequently. Farmers’ awareness of brand is very weak. This behavior not only increases the farmer’s own cost, but also poses a challenge on agricultural enterprise promoting brand and cultivating loyalty of farmers. How to guide the farmers and choose the company’s products to enhance brand awareness and farmers’ loyalty has become an important issue to be solved for companies of agricultural production means. So based on the context of Chinese rural communities, this study explored and built an influencing mechanism model of knowledge sharing on farmers’ brand switching of agricultural production means in order to reveal the decision-making mechanism in brand conversion from the perspective of knowledge sharing and provide references for agricultural enterprises making brand management strategies.On the basis of domestic and overseas relevant research results, this paper, from the phenomenon of farmers’ frequent brand switching, and based on the specific environment of rural communities, and combined with related theories of knowledge sharing, customer brand switching, farmers buying behavior and so on, proposed an influencing mechanism model of knowledge sharing on farmers’ brand switching of agricultural production means in the rural community. Then based on the survey data of 257 farmers from Shouguang City in Shandong Province, Xiantao City in Hubei Province and Chengdu City in Sichuan Province this paper examined the model. The main conclusions drawn are as follows:(1) The phenomenon of knowledge sharing is very common when farmers buy agricultural production means. In the collected 257 questionnaires, 99.2% farmers had the knowledge sharing behavior when buying agricultural production means; with different kinds of knowledge sharing subjects, farmers have different tendency to trust. Farmers who like to communicate with other ordinary farmers share the highest proportion of 76.2% and farmers who like to communicate with retailers share lower proportion of only 57.8%. And the perceived value is the highest after sharing with farmers and the lowest with retailers.(2) Knowledge sharing content of agricultural production means can be divided into two dimensions: the product’s internal clues sharing and external clues sharing. The internal clues sharing had significant positive effect on farmers’ brand perceived value and brand reputation, and had significant negative effect on perceived risk. The external clues sharing had significant positive effect on perceived value, and had no significantly influence on perceived risk and brand reputation.(3) Farmers’ perceived value and brand reputation had significant positive effect on brand switching intention and perceived risk had significant negative effect.(4) The effect of product’s internal clues sharing on brand switching intention is completely mediated by brand perception. It means that sharer influence farmers’ perceived value, perceived risk and brand reputation by sharing products’ internal clues(reliability, effect), and then influence farmers’ brand switching intention.(5) Expertise of message sender positively moderated the relation between internal and external clues sharing and perceived value. And the recipient’s involvement negatively moderated the relation between internal clues sharing and perceived value.Finally, on the basis of the above main conclusion, the paper put forward some marketing suggestions companies of agricultural production means.