品牌检验论

大家都知道，当工厂生产出来的商品差异性愈来愈小时，顾客就会透过对品牌的认知，进行购买决策。商品是工厂的产出结果，顾客认知才是品牌价值所在。尤其当市场竞争愈趋激烈。行销人员愈来愈想信利润与品牌的价值成正比，唯有巩固品牌忠诚才能掌握成功的钥匙，而此须依据与顾客的关系建立，这来自于与顾客间的各种沟通方式及态势。     

从顾客体验价值看民营餐厅整合营销

面对机遇与挑战,民营餐厅如何做大做强,是经营者共同关心的问题。民营餐厅只有以顾客体验价值为导向,做好整合营销,才可能树立起新的餐饮品牌。本文从顾客体验价值着手,浅析民营餐厅整合营销的策略和措施,为民营餐厅做好整合营销提供参考依据。     

制药企业品牌价值与营销传播模式

由于药品的特殊性,人们在选择药品时很难直接判断药品的质量,只能凭借药品品牌去判断药品的质量。顾客感知品牌价值的线索很多,根据药品顾客对产品质量和价值的感知规律,进行整合营销传播并塑造理想的品牌形象是制定有效营销传播的关键。根据制药企业顾客品牌价值理论,分析制药企业顾客品牌联想的一般线索规律,提出制药企业塑造品牌的整合营销传播模式。     

论品牌核心价值的塑造

品牌核心价值就如产品的生命与灵魂，是一个品牌个性之所在。文章认为，品牌核心价值的塑造要把握好三个方面：首先要有提炼品牌核心价值的科学方法；其次，运用整合营销传播演绎品牌核心价值；最后要以顾客忠诚为目标全面推进品牌核心价值建设。     

基于质量和价格的顾客购买决策模型

产品质量和顾客价值之间的确切关系,至今的各种顾客价值理论都不能给出一个让人满意的答案。本文通过“要约质量”概念的建立,将“边际效用递减”法则应用于对顾客购买决策的分析,揭开了产品质量和顾客价值之间关系的真正面纱;同时,建立了一个基于产品质量和价格的顾客购买决策模型,并探讨“要约质量”对顾客购买决策的影响。     

基于顾客满意的服务品牌——以银行业为例

竞争优势本质上来源于顾客认同的、高的差异性消费价值，而服务品牌正是这种价值及其特色的体现。品牌的价值是资产价值、顾客价值、股东价值的统一体，且以顾客价值和顾客满意为前提。服务企业瞄准顾客关键需求，制定品牌承诺并采用卓越服务标准，积极开展服务创新，可在保证顾客的基础上提升自身的品牌价值。     

商业集聚印象与消费者口碑传播的关系

商业集聚是一系列零售店铺在地理上的集中,这种空间上的联合会产生1+1＞2的经济与创新的双重协同增值效应,提升城市商圈的综合实力.而商业集聚印象是消费者对集聚体客观实在的感知,是商业集聚体竞争力的一种具体表现.本文基于M-R模型和“认知—情感—行为”理论,对商业集聚印象影响消费者口碑传播的机制进行实证研究.研究结果显示,消费者情感和顾客认同都充当了部分中介作用,而顾客认同对口碑传播的直接影响和作用更为显著;消费者情感不仅对口碑传播具有直接影响,而且通过顾客认同对消费者口碑传播产生间接作用.     

顾客参与影响品牌关系质量研究

随着顾客知识的增长及其对独特性需求体验的追求,顾客不仅要求有更大程度的自主性,更把参与过程的主导性体验视为服务体验质量的重要源泉。本文以美发业为研究情境,将顾客心理感知因素作为过程变量,构建顾客参与影响品牌关系质量的研究框架,结果表明顾客参与对顾客感知价值和顾客服务体验均有显著正向影响,而对顾客正面情感的影响则需通过服务体验实现;顾客感知价值、顾客服务体验和顾客正面情感之间均有密切正向关系;顾客感知价值、顾客正面情感均对品牌关系质量有显著正向影响,而服务体验则需通过顾客正面情感和感知价值对品牌关系质量产生作用。     

白酒企业文化营销策略应用研究

文化营销在白酒营销中应用非常广泛,即白酒企业利用白酒产品文化、品牌文化迎合顾客的文化需求和精神需求,从而获得顾客的认同。白酒企业成功地进行文化营销有两个关键点,一是准确地提炼白酒产品和品牌的核心文化价值,二是围绕核心文化价值进行有效的传播。白酒企业进行文化营销时,必须避免滥用文化,迷信文化和进行单纯的概念炒作等文化营销误区。     

如何构建品牌核心价值

市场经济高速发展的中国,品牌已经成为顾客购买决策过程中的关键因素。为此,企业家们不惜重金,构建与推广品牌。然而,品牌建设正如大浪淘沙,一些品牌瞬间诞生,迅速消亡,一些品牌则惨淡经营,如履薄冰。面对如此激烈的竞争环境,经常会听到企业管理者与品牌管理者的慨叹与呼声:为什么品牌生命如此脆弱?为什么消费者对品牌的认知与企业的创意大相径庭?为什么企业品牌不能在消费者心目中青春永驻?为什么品牌价值在企业内部与企业外部得到的理解大不相同?所有这些问题的产生都是因为企业没有打造出一个价值唯一,诉求准确,个性鲜明,传播畅通的品牌…     

Does emotional labor moderate customer participation and buying?

Two studies examined whether employees’ emotional labor as perceived by customers, moderates the relationship between customers’ participation and money spent. In Study I, 30 in-depth interviews were conducted with customers to examine participation during shopping as well as customers’ awareness of their service employees’ behaviors. The interviews revealed two types of customer participation: emotional engagement and physical effort. Based on Study I, Study II investigated 114 customers, and the moderating role of perceived employees’ emotional labor on the relationships between customer participation and spending money. Even when customers were highly involved in the purchasing process, they spent less money when they observed employee inauthenticity as manifested in Surface Acting. However, Deep Acting positively moderated the relationship between customer participation and spending money. These findings help shed light on the circumstances in which customer participation is strengthened (leading to greater spending) or weakened.     

The Future of Managing Customers as Assets

SUMMARY

Most companies do a very poor job of determining the economic value of their customers. There are three primary reasons that this has been the case: (1) inadequacy of technology, (2) managements' internal focus on products (as opposed to customers), and (3) inadequacy of accounting systems. Each of these areas, however, has undergone rapid transformation in terms of their sophistication and managerial usefulness. As a result, it is manifest destiny that asset valuation and management will evolve to the evaluation of a company's most fundamental asset, its customers (i.e., customer lifetime value). Most managers have come to accept this inevitability. What managers fail to realize is just how radically an understanding of customer lifetime value will transform the business landscape. It will dramatically impact the breadth and type of data collected; the way managers view and segment customers; the types of experiences firms offer customers; the metrics executives provide to the financial markets; and the way companies structure and staff their organizations.     

Quantifying the influence of customer experience on consumer share-of-category

Customer experience is an all-encompassing construct, and most companies go to considerable lengths to create memorable, extraordinary experiences. Nevertheless, customers experience offerings, companies, and their brands very differently. Using one qualitative and three quantitative studies we explore customers’ experiences from a financial perspective by measuring and quantifying the linkages between these and customers’ share-of-category. When measured by means of customers’ share-of-category, customers demonstrate significantly different purchasing intentions and behavior. In addition, customer retail service experiences that influence the share-of-category differ significantly between customers with a low and a high share-of-category. We expand our knowledge of customer experience by highlighting that different customer groups may perceive a similar retail experience differently, leading to a different purchasing behavior and influencing their respective share-of-category. This study expands existing research by providing empirical evidence of the link between the customer experience and customers’ purchasing behavior.     

Better or Worse? Effects of online promotion habits on customer value: An empirical study

Online frequent and uninterrupted price discounts easily cause customers to form general tendencies to purchase promotions, or ‘online promotion habits’. Compared with offline promotion shopping, the distinct features of online promotion shopping make customer behaviours highly changeable and leave the effects of online promotion habits on customer value a puzzle. Using a dataset of real transactions from a leading online apparel retailer in China, this study makes continuous observations of customers’ online promotion habits. Drawing on the behavioural learning theory, we empirically investigate the dynamic effects of online promotion habits on customer value. The results reveal that after customers form online promotion habits, their customer value increases significantly. Furthermore, among customers with online promotion habits, online promotion habits exert an inverted U-shaped effect on customer value. Namely, as online promotion habits strengthen, customer value increases accordingly, yet negative outcomes show if online promotion habits exceed a certain level. We discuss the theoretical and managerial implications of our findings, which will enable researchers and practitioners to measure and dynamically manage customers’ online promotion habits.     

Social Media and Purchasing Behavior: A Study of the Mediating Effect of Customer Relationships

Overwhelmed by the use of social media in augmenting human interactions, researchers have developed special interest in understanding the use of social media in developing strong and customized relationships with customers. In line with this, the current study aims to explore the impact of social media on purchasing behavior with mediating effect of customer relationship. The findings indicate that majority of the respondents use social media for purchasing purpose and there is a positive relation between social media and customer relationship, as well as social media and purchasing behavior, with customer relationships fully mediating and enhancing the relationship between social media and purchasing behavior. It has been also found that the majority of the respondents use social media for purchasing purposes. This study offers new insights into the conceptual development and understanding of social media in enhancing customer relationships and affecting purchasing behavior. The study acts as a strong support and aid towards developing and managing global customer relationships through the use of social media.     

“Yes,we do. Why not use augmented reality?” customer responses to experiential presentations of AR-based applications

Augmented reality (AR) is regarded as a visually transformative technology that enables consumers to gain immersive and enjoyable information about experience products/services during the purchasing process. Based on the stimulus-organism-response (S–O-R) paradigm, this study investigates how experiential AR applications (apps) influence customers' experiential value, in turn enhancing continued usage intention. Furthermore, perceived customer support plays an even more important role in enhancing customers’ continued usage intention. This study obtained data through an online survey of 437 customers of the YouCam Makeup app in Taiwan. We used SmartPLS software to analyze the data and test the hypotheses. The findings suggest that the features of an experiential AR app have a greater positive impact on hedonic value than utilitarian value; in turn, only hedonic value has a positive impact on continued usage intention. The results further demonstrate that the effect of hedonic value on continued usage intention is positively moderated by perceived customer support.     

Designing an emotional strategy: Strengthening digital channel engagements

The emergence of new technologies has revolutionized the way companies interact and build relationships with customers. The channel–customer relationship has traditionally been managed via a push approach in communication (“What can we sell customers?”) with the hope of cultivating customer loyalty. However, emotional understandings of customers and how they feel about a product, service, or business can drastically alter consumers’ engagement, behavior, and purchasing preferences. This rapidly evolving landscape has left managers at a loss, and what they are experiencing is likely the beginning of a tectonic shift in the way digital channels are designed, monitored, and managed. In this article, digital channel relationships are examined, and useful concepts for clarifying and refining the emotional meaning behind company strategy and their relationship to corresponding digital channels are detailed. Using three case study examples, we discuss the process and impact of such emotionally aware digital channel designs. Recommendations are made regarding how companies can select, design, and maintain digital engagements based on their strategy and industry needs.     

Survey data and Bayesian analysis: a cost-efficient way to estimate customer equity

We present a Bayesian framework for estimating the customer lifetime value (CLV) and the customer equity (CE) based on the purchasing behavior deducible from the market surveys on customer purchasing behavior. The proposed framework systematically addresses the challenges faced when the future value of customers is estimated based on survey data. The scarcity of the survey data and the sampling variance are countered by utilizing the prior information and quantifying the uncertainty of the CE and CLV estimates by posterior distributions. Furthermore, information on the purchase behavior of the customers of competitors available in the survey data is integrated to the framework. The introduced approach is directly applicable in the domains where a customer relationship can be thought to be monogamous. As an example on the use of the framework, we analyze a consumer survey on mobile phones carried out in Finland in February 2013. The survey data contains consumer given information on the current and previous brand of the phone and the times of the last two purchases.     

Look but Don’t Touch! The Impact of Active Interpersonal Haptic Blocking on Compensatory Touch and Purchase Behavior

This research investigates situations in which frontline employees deliberately restrict customers’ access to touch products on display (active interpersonal haptic blocking), and how this understudied form of sensory blocking may increase customers’ downstream purchasing. While previous research examines the benefits of increased product touch, we temporarily block touch for specific products in display areas and then investigate the subsequent impact on customer behavior. Through four studies, including a retail field experiment, we find that when an employee asks a customer not to touch a product on display, this initiates a serial mediation process which: (1) engenders feelings of psychological reactance that result in (2) increased compensatory touching of subsequently encountered products to counterbalance a loss of sensory freedom, and (3) increased spending and purchasing once the customer leaves the reactance-inducing encounter. Effects are moderated by socioeconomic status (SES) and need for touch (NFT) whereby psychological reactance was significantly stronger for high SES customers with a moderate or high NFT when actively blocked. Results also demonstrate that active interpersonal haptic blocking does not result in more negative attitudes toward retailers, thus retailers might consider implementing this counterintuitive practice to encourage downstream sales.     

Purchasing Higher-Value,Higher-Price Offerings in Business Markets

Purpose: A conceptual framework is proposed and tested to better understand customers' purchase of higher-value, higher-price offerings in business markets. Ambiguity about superior value and consequences of obtaining superior value are the constructs in this framework. Ambiguity about superior value is meant to capture the concern and doubt that managers at customer firms have about whether their business will actually realize the cost savings or ability to earn incremental revenue and profits that suppliers claim for their offerings. Consequences of obtaining superior value refers to the outcomes that a customer manager anticipates or experiences in making a purchase decision for higher-value, higher-price offerings.

Methodology: Two operationalizations of each construct are studied in a pair of experiments with purchasing managers and plant maintenance managers.

Findings: Value evidence and incentive to change each receive significant support as mechanisms to reduce ambiguity about superior value. Notably, reference customers and pilot programs appear to be equally effective as value evidence in reducing ambiguity about superior value. In addition, the results provide strong empirical support that incentive to change operates as a threshold phenomenon, as predicted from social judgment theory. While no significant differences in purchase preferences are found for area of responsibility (purchasing versus plant maintenance managers), significant support is found for performance review and reward system as a manipulation of consequences of obtaining superior value.

Contribution: The conceptual framework and empirical results significantly contribute to our understanding of how suppliers in business markets can use monetary as well as nonmonetary means to persuade customers to purchase higher-value, yet higher-price offerings.