Academic Research学术研究连载

走进中国工业品牌管理与竞争的新常态

Entering into the “IB and HB branding management Era”

                               by Dr. Yang XiaoTong

 Edited by Eric and authorized for release

OVERVIEW

For now, we are moving on to another part where brand trust is a focal point of our continued academic research here. It will explains in details the strong links between brand trust, as derived from a specific branding strategy, and the ultimate commercial success enjoyed by a particular individual company who has that sort of brand trust from their customers.       

2.3 Study of Brand Trust

Archrol pointed out in his findings in 1991 that, creating a strong brand name has been considered a common goal for numerous organizations to achieve as there is a trend that marketing activities are staying focused on trust-based experience sharing and brand commitment (Delgado-Ballester & Munera-Aleman, 2005). To a given firm or an organization, brand is invaluable in many ways and that is believed to be largely due to the higher credibility as customers can perceived from a given brand (Chaudhuri & Holbrook, 2001). It is to say, the more credible a brand is, the more convincing a brand commitment is perceived. Making commitment to target customers can help a given firm convey its willingness to maintain a long-lasting good relationship with its customers (Moorman, Zaltman & Deshpande, 1992). When it comes to the valuable relation between trust and commitment, we believe in its presence only when it is deemed of great importance (Morgan & Hunt, 1994). It was emphasized by many including Moorman, Zaltman, Deshpande, Doney and Cannon that conceptually trust relates closely to uncertainty only. Overall, brand trust is the extent to which a certain product or service under that brand is recognized by the customers in terms of their specific desired functionalities (Chaudhuri & Holbrook, 2001). Therefore, brand trust is an important part in developing loyalty (Berry, 1993; Reicheld & Schefter, 2000). To a given firm where relationship marketing is carried out, it is even seen as a most powerful influencing factor (Berry, 1995). Despite most recent studies with a focus on the relation of consumers to brand (e.g. Aaker, 1997; Fournier, 1998), research works are still far from sufficient on how brand trust works from a consumer’s point of view (e.g. Fletcher & Peters, 1997; Sirdeshmukh et al., 2002). According to Reast’s findings in 2003, credibility and performance satisfaction are very important to impose influence on brand trust as a dual-factor mechanism, which was backed by a modeling result suggesting that brand trust can justify the two very influencing factors (adjusted R2 of 0.670). Moreover it’s worth noting that geographically brand trust can be hugely variable among different regions, such as domestic brands versus international brands, as revealed in a marketing research that was carried out with some major brands from various regions of the leading western countries. The findings is, local brands earned significantly stronger brand trust than international brands did (Schuiling & Kapferer, 1991), which is a good reflection that trust proved to be a key element to measure brand equity (Aaker, 1991; Kapferer, 1991). Similarly, brand loyalty works in the same way. According to what was found by Chaudhuri & Holbrook in 2001, there are two determinants to build up brand loyalty, brand trust and brand emotion. Besides, as two different concepts, brand trust and brand emotion combined are decisive as to how brand loyalty is assessed in terms of purchase loyalty and attitudinal loyalty, having a huge impact on how market share and pricing move. Simply, customer loyalty can be understood as repeated purchase or at least the will to make repeated purchase.

As brand trust becomes a key factor affecting customers to make repeated purchase, brand loyalty is more and more like commitment. Back in 1987, Assael defined brand loyalty as commitment to a specific brand based on positive brand attitude. Nowadays, brand loyalty in manufacturers’ eyes is a key element to delivering superior business performance, leading to all sorts of trust-driven marketing efforts. In a marketing research carried out by Morgan and Hunt in 1994, trust was explained as the confidence a customer has in what is exchanged for in terms of how reliable and consistent it would be. To reinforce that argument, we can take a look at some other marketing literatures which unanimously lay stress on trust which is regarded as a core part to trust building (Moorman, Deshpande & Zaltman,1993; Rotter,1967; Altman & Taylor,1973; Dwyer & LaGace,1986; Larzelere & Huston,1980; Rotter,1971). Staying focused on what comes as a result of that, Anderson and Narus described trust as a strong belief one company has in another one that action will be taken quickly for positive outcomes as expected rather than for unexpected negative outcomes when something goes wrong. At present, trust like commitment is already an object on which an incredible amount of marketing research has been conducted. It is very much so with the study of organizational behaviors as social exchange is extremely common to take place among different organizations. Berry emphasized that loyalty is something based on trust in B2C market, especially at a time of negotiations between purchasers and suppliers. It was founded by Schurr and Ozanne in 1985 that, trust is a central pillar for consensus to be reached in negotiations, and proves to be functional in making the partner stay loyal or even more loyal to mutual cooperation, like what commitment does.

From other studies on industrial marketing and purchasing group (Ford,1990; Hakansson,1982), we have the same thinking with trust being regarded as a core of what the studies revolve around. As far as industrial produces is concerned, trust lies in the relationship between the purchasers and the suppliers (Gadde & Hakansson, 1994). So, by inference, brand can be interpreted as something that engages a company in this relationship with trust as a precondition to doing so. An argument by some scholars is, making purchase in B2B market is actually a progressive process of industrial customers to build up trust with suppliers. From marketing’s perspective, brand has a bigger part in decision-making process of purchasing industrial produces than it was previously thought of as something trivial. A positive company or brand image is expected to win you the trust as supplier to some extent, as confirmed by what was discovered by Stuart in 1998, the most well-perceived companies from customers’ angle on the quality of products are those striving to raise their brand image. Since the purchasers of industrial produces are generally thought to have extraordinarily rational thinking for minimized cost of making purchase, emotional marketing tactics actually has very little chance of influencing them at a time when purchasing decision is to be made. However, according to some other scholars’ findings about brand marketing in industrial market, brand value did have influence on decision-making process emotionally (Martinez & De Chernatony, 2004). Although purchasing of industrial produces is usually performed by those corporate divisions like purchasing center, decision-making is still down to comprehensive cognition in the mind of each individual within the same group of people. The more common each individual’s cognition to a given brand is, the more credible it is felt in common. Under this circumstance, buying decision is more likely to be influenced by it (Bengtsson & Servais, 2005). Apart from that, we have another scholar who found that, ingredient brands had concrete impact on customers as to how the quality of host branded products was perceived. Especially for those brands which symbolize products of medium-leveled quality, brand is constructive to make their marketing efforts effective (McCarthy & Norris, 1999). As Achrol (1991) pointed out, trust is a deciding factor to making relationship commitment. In terms of relationship marketing, trust-commitment theory is further explored with a conclusion that, firm value will be kept at a high level if better resources or opportunities can be offered and shared with exchange partners for efficient communication of valuable information that is helpful in managing trust-commitment relationship marketing to optimal effects, such as expectations, market intelligence and the assessment of exchange partner’s business performance. In this way, long-lasting competitive advantage is attainable (Morgan & Hunt, 1994).

Very few of marketing researchers have ever conducted study on brand trust in B2B market, and even fewer of them have put focus on brand trust with ingredient products offered in this market. It is particularly the case with many emerging markets around the world, like China. Given this situation, it is believed that further study on this subject will be undoubtedly worthwhile (Kotler & Pfoertsch, 2010).

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For contact with the author, please email to shanshan@towermind.com;

For contact with the editor, please email to yangls@skiplifting.com