Exploring consumer knowledge structures using associative network analysis

This paper offers a new perspective on consumer knowledge analysis that combines Human Associative Memory (HAM) models from cognitive psychology with network analytic approaches in order to gain deeper insights into consumers” mental representations, such as brand images. An illustrative case study compares the associative networks of a manufacturer brand with a retail brand and is used to demonstrate the application and interpretation of various network measures. Network analysis is conducted on three levels: Node‐level analysis yields insights about salient brand image components that can be affected through short‐term marketing activities. Group‐level analysis is concerned with brand image dimensions that characterize a brand and can be strategically influenced in the medium term. Finally, network‐level analysis examines the network structure as a whole, drawing parallels to brand imagery, which needs to be managed over the long term. Management implications are derived and suggestions for further research are provided. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

农产品品牌保护策略探析

随着消费层次升级和健康理念的变化,消费者品牌意识不断增强,农产品品牌安全问题成为消费者关注的焦点。面对假冒伪劣品牌对农产品品牌市场的非竞争性冲击,农产品企业仅依靠常规性品牌管理策略已举步维艰,品牌保护策略是破解品牌侵权等难题的关键。本文从农产品品牌特征、内涵出发,解析农产品企业在品牌保护上的现状、困境和成因;从战略品牌管理、法律保护、战略联合保护网络和品牌管理策略等方面,提出了完善农产品品牌保护的思路和对策。     

What drives customer loyalty in grocery retail? Exploring shoppers' perceptions through associative networks

Mental associations play a key role in shaping customer-brand relationships and are critical to the development of favourable attitudes and emotional attachment towards a brand. By exploring shoppers’ knowledge structures, this study identifies what drivers of customer loyalty are more relevant to customers in the context of grocery retail. A mix-method study on shoppers’ perceptions and values associated to their most patronised grocery store is presented. Through focus group discussions, concept maps and associative network analysis, three types of associations are identified: functional, relational and premium store associations. Salience and relationships among these dimensions are also discussed.     

Endorsers in Advertising: The Case of Negative Celebrity Information

Abstract

The use of celebrity endorsers is a popular executional device, but it is not without risk. The authors report three studies examining how negative information about a celebrity can affect the brand the celebrity endorses. Using an associative network model of memory as a theoretical framework, they considered four moderating variables: the size of the association set for the brand, the size of the association set for the celebrity, the timing of the negative celebrity information, and the strength of the associative link between the brand and the celebrity. In the first two studies, they used a fictitious but realistic celebrity endorser and in the third they used an actual celebrity. Negative information about a celebrity resulted in a decline in attitude toward the endorsed brand only for the fictitious celebrity. That general relationship was moderated in varying degrees by association set size, timing of the negative information, and the strength of the link between brand and celebrity.     

Evaluating marketplace synergies of ingredient brand alliances

This research examines the marketplace performance of ingredient brand alliances (IBAs). In this type of alliance, a component or feature of a primary or focal brand is branded using a secondary brand. Performance is affected by both the primary and secondary brands, each of which has functional and emotional associations. Drawing on concept combination theory, the authors examine congruent and incongruent effects in both associations as a means of achieving synergy in the brand. While the extant literature largely focuses on consumer perceptions of ingredient brand alliance products as an outcome, the authors examine the market share and revenues for 126 ingredient brand alliances in 49 product categories of consumer packaged goods over 14?years. A generalized estimation equation shows that, on average, each brand's associations have positive main effects on ingredient brand alliance performance. However, congruent associations (such as the perceived functional associations of both brands) attenuate these effects, while incongruent associations (the perceived functional association of one brand with the perceived emotional association of another) were not significant. The article concludes with a simulation showing that managers can do better by picking a partner brand whose associations are more incongruent, rather than merely what seems to be the strongest partner on both associations.     

Eclipsing: When Celebrities Overshadow the Brand

This paper applies Gestalt psychology and associative network theory to examine the effect of eclipsing in celebrity endorsement on consumer attitude towards the endorsed brand. Eclipsing occurs when the celebrity overshadows the endorsed brand by dominating in an advertisement and diminishing the associative link between the celebrity and endorsed brand. Three studies take into account match‐up, celebrity attachment, brand familiarity, and the moderating role of eclipsing, through manipulating two levels of eclipsing in advertising: (1) high eclipsing, when the celebrity is the focus, and (2) low eclipsing, when both the celebrity and brand are emphasized. Consumers who have a weak attachment to the celebrity endorser report a more positive brand attitude when they see the celebrity and endorsed brand both emphasized in an advertisement (low eclipsing) than when the celebrity overshadows and dominates the brand (high eclipsing), irrespective of whether consumers perceive the celebrity and brand to match or mismatch. For consumers with strong celebrity attachment, high eclipsing enhances brand attitude, regardless of whether they perceive the celebrity and brand to either match or mismatch. The findings of these studies have significant implications for advertisers and brand managers in the execution of their advertisements featuring endorsements.     

虚拟社区成员强化动机对品牌选择行为的作用机理

网络社交媒介的涌现导致企业越来越趋向于以虚拟品牌社区的方式进行产品营销,并试图通过这种方式将企业品牌形象深植到消费者心中,进而形成较高的品牌忠诚度。鉴于此,可基于社会网络、品牌社区等理论,构建社会强化动机、网络中心度及虚拟品牌社区成员品牌选择行为之间关系的理论模型,进而通过设计问卷对虚拟社区成员进行调研,检验社会强化动机对虚拟品牌社区成员品牌忠诚度的作用机理,探究网络中心度在虚拟品牌社区强化动机与品牌选择行为之间的中介作用。研究发现,社会强化动机能有效提高虚拟社区成员的程度中心度和中介中心度;虚拟社区成员的程度中心度和中介中心度越高,社会强化动机越强,其对虚拟社区的归属感越强;成员的社区归属感越强,越倾向于保护自己的品牌并抵制竞争品牌。由此可见,企业为更好地进行虚拟品牌社区管理,需要注重对成员社会强化动机的激发,鼓励成员参与社区活动;需要重点关注网络中心度高的成员,激发其信息分享热情;需要致力于虚拟品牌社区建设,不断增强成员归属感。     

企业环保主张对消费者绿色购买意愿的影响机制研究

在广告设计中如何使用环保主张是影响广告效果和公司声誉的一项重要决策。基于此，文章引入归因理论和精细加工可能性模型对企业环保主张的效果和发生机制进行分析。结果表明：相较于关联型环保主张，消费者面对实质型环保主张时的绿色购买意愿更高；消费者环境关注调节了环保主张对绿色购买意愿的影响，即相较于关联型（实质型）环保主张，高环境关注（低环境关注）的消费者面对实质型（关联型）环保主张时绿色购买意愿更强；同时消费者的CSR内部动机感知在环保主张对消费者绿色购买意愿的影响中起中介作用。文章丰富了绿色广告理论体系，为增强企业环保主张的说服效果提供了理论依据。     

Call for papers: Special issue on Latin America

In green advertising research, images of pleasant nature scenery have been classified as vague, unspecific and possibly ineffective green claims, as opposed to substantive, informational claims. In this study, the concept of virtual nature experiences is introduced to point out a perceptual mechanism through which the association of a brand with nature imagery may indeed lead to significant advertising effects. Consumers’ exposure to specific nature imagery in green brand communications may lead to pleasant feelings analogous to those experienced in ‘real’ nature. If adequately conditioned, these ‘virtual nature experiences’ may enhance the consumer’s attitude towards a given brand. The perceptual and attitudinal effects of substantive green claims and nature imagery are analysed in the scope of an experimental study. The field study consisted of a national survey, allowing for the relative statistical representativeness of the sample. Results of the study confirm significant perceptual and attitudinal effects of both informational claims and virtual nature experiences. The latter are identified as a distinct perceptual dimension of green brand associations, and turn out to wield additional positive influences on the consumer’s attitude towards the brand.     

Consumer response to service brand physical elements: Using a semantic priming task to explore implicit understanding of service brand meaning

Consumers' responses to design features involve both conscious and non-conscious information processing. The current research therefore argues that a combination of explicit and implicit measures should be used to assess consumer understanding of service brand meaning conveyed by a service brand's physical elements. However, most methods traditionally used to evaluate design meaning are explicit methods, based on conscious cognitive processes. The current research addresses this gap by documenting how understanding of service brand meaning conveyed by a service brand's physical elements can be tapped by an implicit measure. More specifically, it aims to investigate the extent to which a greater ability to decode meaning conveyed by design features results in differences in implicit understanding of service brand meaning. This research uses a Semantic Priming Task to assess associative strength between brand meaning and a service brand's physical elements. Results (N = 157) show that command of the design language, captured by design acumen and involvement in the product category, results in greater ability to implicitly understand brand meaning conveyed by a service brand's physical elements, and moderates the implicit-explicit relationship. Results suggest that combining implicit and explicit measures may help practitioners in charge of creating brand's physical elements, especially when associations between design types and brand impressions are not constant across product categories.     

Too much of a good thing? Consumer response to strategic changes in brand image

The current research investigates a potential disadvantage of building brand associations that resonate with consumers' identities and facilitate consumer–brand bonding. The authors propose a theory of consumer response to changes that either dampen or augment the associations central to brand image (e.g., due to brand acquisitions or repositioning). The results show that consumers with a high degree of self–brand connection respond more negatively than others do to changes that dampen brand associations. Counterintuitively, changes augmenting brand associations can also lead to unfavorable consumer sentiments in certain instances. When brand connection was linked to an ideal self-identity (i.e., self-enhancement motives), changes that augmented the brand image increased the brand's ability to signal an ideal identity. Conversely, when brand connection was linked to the actual self-identity (i.e., self-verification motives), augmenting brand image reduced the perceived similarity between the self and the brand, thus causing brand identification to deteriorate.     

Long Live Creative Media Choice

Building on associative learning theory, we hypothesize that a creative media choice (i.e., creatively choosing a novel medium to implicitly communicate the message) produces more persisting brand associations than ad placement in a traditional medium. Furthermore, we argue that it could serve as a cue that spontaneously reminds consumers of the brand, and may transfer new associations onto the brand, even after the brand is no longer featured in it. We test the effects of a creative media choice versus ad placement in a traditional medium (previously only tested on fictitious brands with scenarios), employing real brands and incidental exposure to real media in two experiments. The results support the hypotheses.     

绿色认证对品牌信任和购买意愿的影响研究

绿色认证是政府或民间机构向企业证明其产品符合相关环境保护要求的手段.通过绿色认证的企业通常会把绿色证书或标志放在公司网站和产品包装的显著位置,目的是提高消费者对企业生产的产品和品牌的信任感,提高消费者的购买意愿.文章通过问卷调查,检验绿色标志对消费者品牌信任度和购买意愿的影响,分析了消费者价值观对这种影响的作用,提出结论和未来研究方向.     

网络负面谣言与品牌崇拜：品牌口碑与沟通技巧的作用

文章对网络负面谣言与消费者品牌崇拜的关系，以及品牌口碑与沟通技巧在以上关系中所起的中介与调节作用进行了实证研究。研究以广州地区211家品牌服饰企业的品牌管理者为实证研究对象，通过对问卷调查数据进行层级回归分析发现：(1)网络负面谣言不但会直接负向影响消费者对企业的品牌崇拜，而且还会通过负向影响企业的品牌口碑，继而对消费者品牌崇拜产生负面影响，品牌口碑在网络负面谣言与消费者品牌崇拜关系中起部分中介作用；(2)沟通技巧程度强的企业品牌更能抵制网络负面谣言的影响，相对于低沟通技巧的企业，高沟通技巧企业的消费者较少因为网络负面谣言而降低其对原有消费品牌的崇拜。     

论中小企业集群的区域营销

集群是在某一特定领域中,大量产业联系密切的企业以及相关支撑机构在空间上集聚,形成强劲、持续竞争优势的现象。在市场经济条件下,对中小企业集群区进行区域营销可以形成具有持久效应的区 位品牌。同时在区域营销中,通过电子商务降低成本,使专卖店获取一体化垄断利益,改进区域营销方 式。     

Heading the Right Way? The Influence of Motion Direction in Advertising on Brand Trust

Integrating research on visual marketing, spatial associations, and brand inferences, the authors conduct four studies demonstrating that when consumers see an ad featuring an object moving in a left-to-right, rather than a right-to-left, direction, their trust toward the featured brand increases. This effect is mediated by an enhanced sense of “feeling right” resulting from the fit between how Western consumers are accustomed to envisioning action and information unfolding (from left to right), and the direction of implied motion in the ad. The authors identify stereotypical gender associations of the brand as a theoretically relevant moderator, such that the favorable influence of a left-to-right motion direction on brand trust is enhanced when the advertised product is strongly (versus weakly) associated with masculine characteristics.     

A Proposed Model for Consumer-Based Brand Equity Analysis on Social Media Using Data Mining and Social Network Analysis

Online social networks have expanded their “virtual borders,” making the Internet more like an environment of social interaction than a business tool. However, even before the emergence and expansion of social media, marketing professionals were interested in identifying consumers' perceptions about brands. Thus, operational models have been proposed to facilitate such a task. Those models, however, can be expensive and inconvenient, since the models use questionnaires for data collection. To help overcome this problem, this article proposes a model for brand equity analysis from the consumer perspective expressed in social networks using opinion mining techniques and social network analysis. The application of the proposed model on data collected from Twitter made it possible to analyze five brand equity dimensions: brand awareness, brand loyalty, perceived sentiment, perceived quality, and brand associations. The results reached by the application of the model show that brand equity can be analyzed from data retrieved from virtual social networks, disclosing how consumers perceive brands in such an environment, without using questionnaires, enabling different brands in different contexts. Those data can be analyzed under both objective and replicable criteria for each of the brand equity elements that make up the model.     

黑龙江省发展绿色食品企业集团的思路与措施

绿色食品是 2 1世纪的主导食品 ,市场前景非常广阔 ,黑龙江具有发展绿色食品的得天独厚的自然优势 ;但是由于黑龙江的绿色食品加工企业规模小 ,加工分散 ,知名品牌少 ,使得黑龙江省的优质绿色食品市场竞争力弱 ,产品市场占有率低。为了提高黑龙江省绿色食品的市场竞争力 ,必须走绿色食品生产规模化、产品名牌化之路。为此 ,绿色食品行业发展大企业集团则是黑龙江省的必然选择     

The Role of Brand Names and Visual Cues in Enhancing Memory for Consumer Packaged Goods

The research focuses on the degree of association between brand names and accompanying visuals featured on packages to improve consumer learning. It was found that when visuals are associated with the target information (such as a brand name), then memory for the brand is enhanced. It was also found that memory will be greater for brand names that are prior-associated in consumers' memory than for family and novel brand names. The findings are congruent with associative network theory that would suggest easier processing and greater memory for target elements that are prior- and/or visually linked to existing memory pathways.     

顾客参与风格对企业品牌资产的影响机制——基于关系联结的视角

随着移动互联技术与虚拟经济的高速发展,虚拟品牌社区成为消费者参与企业活动,与企业沟通的重要窗口,并在品牌营销中发挥着日益重要的作用,成为企业与消费者建立持久、和谐关系联结的重要工具以及企业品牌资产提升的重要载体和手段。依据风格特征视角,虚拟品牌社区中的顾客参与可以划分为任务型参与、社交型参与和贡献型参与,三种风格的顾客参与是企业品牌资产形成和提升的重要前置因素,并通过关系联结的中介机制影响企业品牌资产。顾客任务型参与、社交型参与和贡献型参与能够正向影响企业的品牌知名度、顾客感知质量和顾客忠诚度;关系联结在顾客参与风格和企业品牌资产的关系中起中介作用,在顾客任务型参与和品牌资产的关系中起完全中介作用,在顾客社交型参与/贡献型参与和品牌资产的关系中起部分中介作用;社区意识在不同顾客参与风格和关系联结关系中发挥的调节作用不同,正向调节顾客任务型/社交型参与对财务联结的正向影响,正向调节顾客社交型/贡献型参与对社会联结的正向影响;竞争强度负向调节关系联结对品牌资产的影响作用,即当行业竞争强度提高时,关系联结对品牌资产的正向影响受到削弱。因此,企业应通过虚拟品牌社区平台,积极引导、掌控和规范不同风格顾客参与,拓展企业价值提升的组织外途径。