企业创新活动如何转化为品牌效应:类别化认知的主导机制

How Do Firm Innovative Activities Transform into Brand Effect: Dominant Categorization Cognition Mechanism

品牌效应是创新绩效的重要来源,但企业创新活动如何转化为品牌效应这一基础问题却未受到关注。本研究通过分析消费者的创新反应过程发现,品牌原型驱动的类别化认知加工主导了从创新感知到品牌偏好形成的认知转化过程,且成为品牌效应形成的基本方式。其中,消费者通过感知企业技术创新、产品创新和营销策略创新三类活动,以类别化认知加工方式建构的品牌层面总体知识——品牌原型直接影响品牌偏好,同时通过影响特定的属性层面知识——品牌先进性的建构间接影响品牌偏好,体现了品牌效应形成的主要力量。本研究为企业创新活动转化为品牌效应的认知加工机制提供了基本的分析框架,为创新绩效的来源提供了新的理论解释;为企业通过管理创新感知性来实现最大的品牌效应以维护创新成功,以及培养创新软实力、提升创新绩效等提供了新的启示。

Brand effect is one of the crucial sources of innovation performance. Prior research, however, has paid little attention to how innovative activities from companies can be transformed into brand effect. Through the analysis of consumer responses to innovation activities, this paper finds that categorization cognition processing driven by the brand prototype dominates the cognitive converting process from innovation perception to brand preference formation and is a general way to develop brand effect. In particular, consumers perceive three types of activities from companies, including firm technology innovation, product innovation and marketing strategy innovation, and directly impact brand preference by constructing brand prototype which represents the holistic knowledge at brand level. Meanwhile they indirectly affect brand preference through their influences on the construction of brand sophistication as specific attribute-specific knowledge, embodying the main power of generating brand effect. These results provide an analytical framework for the psychological processing mechanism underlying the transformation from firm innovative activities to brand effect, and a new theoretical explanation for the sources of innovation performance. In addition, these results have implications for firms to maintain innovation success to maximize brand effect through management innovation perception, the cultivation of innovation soft capability, the enhancement of innovation performance, and so on.