문장형 브랜드네임의 품질암시와 구체성이 구매의도에 미치는 영향 - 구매관여도의 조절 역할

Abstract

This study explores the effects of quality signaling and the concreteness of a sentence-form brand name on purchase intention, focusing on the moderating role of consumers’ purchase involvement, which has been rarely investigated by earlier works. The sentence-form brand name refers to a brand that includes any kind of sentence. Some brand names, such as “WeAretheSuperlativeConspiracy,” “I Can’t Believe. It’s Not Butter!,” and “行列のできる店のラーメン” are representative examples. Quality signaling and concreteness have been considered important characteristics of product information, and are closely related to product evaluation in the field of consumer information processing. In addition, we expect consumers’ purchase involvement to moderate the effects of these characteristics on purchase intention. Based on prior studies, the following four hypotheses have been addressed in the study: High concreteness enhances purchase intention more than low concreteness when the quality signaling is high (H1), and low concreteness enhances purchase intention more than high concreteness when the quality signaling is low (H2). The effect predicted by H1 is more evident in the low purchase involvement condition (H3); and that predicted by H2 is more evident in the high purchase involvement condition (H4). Specifically, the ease of message processing, the effect of high diagnostic information on the evaluation (e.g., Chang and Wildt 1994; Herr, Kardes and Kim 1991; Zeithaml 1988), the cognitive miser theory (e.g., Fiske and Taylor 1984; Orbell and Dawes 1991), and the effect of consumer involvement on their message processing (e.g., Petty and Cacioppo 1981; Petty, Cacioppo, and Schumann 1983) were logical grounds for the hypotheses. A 2(quality signaling: high or low) by 2(concreteness: high or low) by 2(purchase involvement: high or low) between-subjects factorial design was employed for the study. In order to earn extra course credits, 194 undergraduate students belonging to the college of one of the authors participated in the study. The sample group was between 20 and 26 years of age, with an average of 22.3 years, and nearly 60 percent comprised males. In the questionnaire, the brand name was revealed to the participants along with a visual of the product, which was mineral water. The appearance was identical across experimental groups and only the brand name varied along the different brand name conditions. We conducted a pretest to select four brand names for each brand name condition. Twelve brand names were initially selected by the authors from a simple survey. Twenty undergraduate students who did not take part in the main experiment were asked to rank the level of quality signaling and concreteness, respectively, for twelve brand names. The pretests, “Spring Water Coming from Cheonji Lake, Baekdoo Mt. (high quality signaling and high concreteness),” “Spring Water Filled with Freshness (high quality signaling and low concreteness),” “Spring Water Coming with Shaking (low quality signaling and high concreteness),” and “Spring Water Filled with Sprit (low quality signaling and low concreteness),” were selected to be used in the main experiment. Prior to the experiment, participants were told that the purpose of the study was to analyze consumers' responses to products sold in a convenience store. In order to manipulate the purchase involvement, we asked participants only in the high involvement group to imagine a situation where they would buy mineral water for a person they respected. Subsequent to watching the visual and the brand name of the product, participants were asked to answer questions pertaining to the items, measuring purchase intention for the product (two items on a seven-point scale, α = .87), the levels of the quality signaling (three items on a seven-point scale, α = .88), the concreteness of the brand name (three items on a seven-point scale, α = .78), the level of purchase involvement (three items on a seven-point scale, α = .80), as well as demographics. At the end of the class, all participants were given a debriefing questionnaire that asked them in an open-ended format to report what they believed to be the purpose of the study. None of the participants was aware of the true purpose of the study. The measurement of quality signaling revealed that the scores were 4.42 and 3.29 for the high and low quality signaling conditions, respectively (F(1,192) = 32.65 p < .001). In addition, as expected, participants rated the concreteness as higher in the high concreteness condition than in the low concreteness condition (4.36 vs. 2.83, F(1,192) = 113.47, p < .001). Likewise, participants in the high purchase involvement condition had a higher mean value than did participants in the low purchase involvement condition (5.18 vs. 4.24, F(1,192) = 43.08, p < .001). These results revealed that our manipulation was indeed successful. However, we should note that the absolute level of purchase involvement in the low purchase involvement condition that was achieved through the manipulation was marginally high. The results showed that high concreteness marginally enhanced the purchase intention when compared with low concreteness, when the quality signaling was high (H1, 3.84 vs. 3.50, t(92) = 1.70, p < .10) and when the quality signaling was low, low concreteness significantly enhanced the purchase intention more than high concreteness (H2, 3.56 vs. 2.91, t(98) = 2.26, p < .05). As expected, the effect predicted by H1 was more evident in the low purchase involvement condition (high purchase involvement condition, t(48) = .67, N.S.; low purchase involvement condition, t(42) = 1.98, p < .05), implying that H3 was supported. However, the effect predicted by H2 was observed only in the high purchase involvement condition (high purchase involvement condition, t(49) = 5.84, p < .001), and not in the low purchase involvement condition. We also found that when consumers were in the low purchase involvement condition, high concreteness, rather than low concreteness, tended to improve the purchase intention. The study has several limitations. First, our sample was limited to one population group, namely, college students. This decreases the generality of the study’s results. Further research should explore the effect by including other population groups and obtaining confirmatory results. Second, we performed the study in a restricted situation using nonprofessional advertisements. It is necessary for further studies to examine effects of sentence-form brand name in a real situation using professional advertisements to derive more practical implications. Third, this study used only one product category to examine the effects of sentence-form brand names. Further research should include other product categories to investigate the extent to which quality signaling and concreteness of sentence-form brand name substantively influence the purchase intention of the product. Finally, the study failed to ensure perfect homogeneity among fictitious brand names used in the experiment (e.g., one experimental brand name included a proper noun). Further research should select experimental brand names more carefully using one or more pretests.