品牌信任和品牌情感:究竟谁导致了品牌忠诚?——一个动态研究

Brand Affect and Brand Trust:Who Actually Cause the Brand Loyalty?A Dynamic Perspective Research

现有关于品牌忠诚影响因素的相关研究发现,品牌信任和品牌情感是品牌忠诚的决定因素。尽管也有很多学者认为应该从动态的视角认识忠诚的概念,但是现有文献却没有随着时间推移来研究消费者品牌忠诚的发展过程。为了弥补现有营销文献中这一理论的不足,本文提供了一个关于品牌情感和品牌信任同时影响品牌忠诚形成过程的动态研究。通过一个纵向情境模拟实验研究发现随着时间的推移,品牌信任对品牌忠诚的影响作用增强了,而品牌情感的影响作用减弱了。并且,消费者对品牌的不一致性体验会削弱这种效应。最后,研究指出品牌情感和品牌信任对品牌忠诚共同的影响作用随着消费经验的积累显著增强。

The topic of brand loyalty has been of great interest to marketing researchers for many years. Previous researchers have recognized both brand trust and brand affect significantly affect brand loyalty judgements. However only a few studies have investigated turstful and affective antecedents of brand loyalty simutaneously. Although previous studies identify the key roles of brand trust and brand affect in influencing brand loyalty, it is important to acknowledge that previous work has largely been static in nature. This represents a significant research gap because it is well established brand loyalty is a dynamic phenomenon and which should be viewed from a dynamic perpective. Based on this background, our study investigates brand loyalty and brand affect simultaneously as dirvers to brand loyalty in a dynamic context. The fundamental proposition of our study is that the roole of trust and affect may change over time. More specifically, we argue that affect plays its strongest role at early stages of brand loyalty development because when the customers are lack of knowledge about the brand. As experience accumulates, however, the impact of brand trust should increase. In order to fit this research gap, this research provides a dynamic framework about the influence from brand affect and brand trust to brand loyalty over time. Our sample consisted of 160 marketing students enrolled in a simulative situational restaurant at a large Chinese university. Because the students are very familiar with consumption situation of the restaurant, this sample is particularly relevant and appropriate. We estimated the three regression models by using the maximum likelihood method in SPSS. The results of a dynamic experimental study indicate that the impact of brand trust on the brand loyalty evaluation increases and the influence of brand affect decreases over time. Moreover, these effects are attenuated with inconsistent performance experiences. Finally, the study shows that the variance in brand loyalty jointly explained by brand trust and brand affect increases as experience accumulates. Several implications follow from our study. Firstly, we illustrate the importance of examining brand loyalty from a dynamic perspective. Secondly, we show that the antecedents leading to brand loyalty vary over time. Thus capturing brand loyalty judgments at only one time may not provide a full picture of the underlying process Moreover, the result also suggests that marketers should view the brand loyalty from a global perspective, the marketers should take different market strategies according to the changing role of the antecedents of the brand loyalty.