Research On The Formation Mechanism And Influence Effect Of Brand Values

May 10 is being marked as the nation's "Chinese Brands Day" by the State Council since 2017.Let China enter the world is different from the past few decades,which relied on the output of product or services,now turned into the brand output,the output of culture thought,the way of life and the values.However,as the country and industry have attached great importance to the construction of China's brand,compared with the global brands around the world,Chinese transnational corporations are relatively weak in creating brand value and building consumer-brand relationships.And from the perspective of brand values,we can better guide the Chinese enterprises to build a global brand,creating brand with the added value of products.But compared with the concepts of enterprise values and brand culture,the company was not clear understanding of the construct of brand values,most directly viewed the brand values and enterprise values as a whole,which have influenced the companies' understanding of how to creat the brand values,and also the influence effect of brand values.Brand values is the construct which using the brand concepts as representations of human values,so as to make the brand with cultural symbolism.Relevant research in domestic and foreign have provided a solid theoretical foundation for us to understand and grasp the connotation of the brand values,combining with literature review on consumer values and enterprise values,we found that most of the existing research focused on the internal perspective of the enterprise values,or directly viewed the consumer values as brand values,without considering from the whole.The formation mechanism and influence effect of brand values haven't uncovered in the academic research.In view of this research gap,our research based on the theory of value co-creation,from the perspective of internal and external of the enterprise,for the first time,elaborating how the brand values is affected by the internal(the founder,CEO and other top management team and employee involvement)and external(external customer and other stakeholders)factors of the company,as well as the influence effect of brand values.This research is very necessary for complement the existing literature of brand values,and also provides practical implications for Chinese enterprises to build global brands and create brand value.In view of the theoretical system is not mature in the field of brand values,the research contact of value co-creation and brand values is relatively scarce,and brand values was also a lack of empirical research,this paper adopts the strategy of hybrid study on research design,includes the qualitative research and quantitative research.Research for the qualitative research,based on the brand biographies of four high-tech companies(Apple,Google,Amazon,Facebook)as a source of data collection,the article uses the grounded theory to construct the formation mechanism and the influence effect model of brand values.Research shows that brand values is affected by the internal and external factors of the company,internal factors include:the founder,CEO and other top management team and employee involvement,and the institutionalization of the company(e.g.brand-centered HRM).The external factors include:external customer(user)and other stakeholders.In addition,the external environment factors and organizational development have a moderating effect on the formation of brand values.The influence effect of brand values including the impact on the organizational level and the influence of individual level,organization level is mainly refers to the brand values's influence on brand value,individual level mainly refers to the influence of the external consumers.Secondly,the quantitative study,on the basis of qualitative research,this article further build empirical research of the influence effect of brand values based on the theory of the "self-congruence".Specifically,the construct of value congruence is based on the theory of "self-congruence",which is used as the antecedents,and choosing consumer-brand identification and brand affect engagement as the mediator variables,verified by the empirical respectively the separate mediation effect of consumer-brand identification or brand affect engagement,and the paralleling mediation effects and serial mediation effects of both of them.Finally,through the theoretical analysis and structural equation model,found the serial mediation model is superior to the paralleling mediation model and the single mediation model.This paper comprises six chapters.Chapter 1 is introduction,including the practical background and theoretical significance of the research,based on this,advances the research question,to focus on the purpose of the research,and explains the main content of research,research method and technical route.Chapter 2 is the related literature review of brand values.This chapter reviews and comments the literatures of consumer values,enterprise values,brand culture and brand values,further clarifying the concept connotation of brand values and laying the foundation for the next research.Chapter 3 is the theoretical foundation and literature review of the whole research.Combed the theory of value co-creation and self-congruence,the constructs of value congruence,consumer brand engagement and consumer-brand identification,in the process of reviewing the existing literature clearly research gaps,and laying the theoretical foundation for subsequent qualitative and quantitative research.Chapter 4 is the qualitative research,based on the brand biographies of four high-tech companies in Interbrand's Top 100 brands,the article uses the grounded theory to construct the formation mechanism and the influence effect model of brand values.Chapter 5 is the quantitative research,on the basis of qualitative analysis,the research introduces the construct of value congruence based on the theory of "self-congruence",further discussing the influence effect of brand values.Chapter 6 is conclusion and prospect.This chapter summarizes the qualitative and quantitative research conclusion,and expounds in detail the theoretical innovation contribution,finally analyzed the limitations of this study and put forward the future research prospects.The theoretical innovation of the research is mainly manifested in the following respects:First of all,clarifying the concept connotation of "Brand Values",and distinguished it from the similar concepts.Most previous studies have directly viewed the consumer values as brand values,but it ignores the role of the enterprise.Some scholars put forward the corporate brand values,but it ignores the important role of the customer in the formation of brand values.On the basis of related literature review of values and brand culture,combined with some existing research,such as Torelli et al.(2012),Jiaxun He and Yi Wu(2015).From the perspective of internal and external of the enterprise,the research defines brand values as the system of shared beliefs which formed in the process of brand planning through "deep construction"(including the founder's advocacy,the participation of top management team and staff and customers and other stakeholders to create value);is the result of the interaction of the enterprise values and consumer values.That is,the better brand behavior in enterprise,the core values which rooted within the enterprise and has finally been perceived by external consumers.Secondly,the formation mechanism and the influence effect model of brand values reveals the process of creating value co-creation based brand equity.Through the qualitative coding analysis,this study determined two core categories,namely the formation mechanism and the influence effect of "brand values".Different from previous studies which only focus on the relationship between enterprises and brand equity,or customer relationship with the brand assets,our research based on the theory of value co-creation,from the perspective of internal and external of the enterprise,for the first time,elaborating how the brand values is affected by the internal(the founder,CEO and other top management team and employee involvement)and external(external customer and other stakeholders)factors of the company,as well as the influence effect of brand values.At the individual level,brand values influence the customer's perception,brand resonance,brand resonance produced by a large number of customers mind rises to the organizational level influences the brand equity(or brand value).Especially in figure 4-2,the red reverse arrow represents the influence effect of brand values to customers will in turn influence customers to participate in the formation of the company's brand values,thus forming the circulation effects on the brand equity.Thirdly,this paper for the first time applied the theory of value co-creation to the formation mechanism of brand values,and combining the theory of leadership traits and emerging leadership theory in detail elaborated how the enterprise interact with external customers and other stakeholders,to jointly affect the formation of brand values.Different from previous model of brand value co-creation,the research also analyzed in detail how the roles in enterprise(such as the founder,CEO and other top management team and employee)interact and communicat with external customers.This study analyzed the founder as a leader,how the role of the variety of leader traits(personality and interests,values,and cognitive mode and management concept)influence the brand values.In fact is the same as the previous studies,this study also found that "founder" has the decisive effect on the establishment of the company's brand values.Fourth,the research introduces the construct of value congruence based on the theory of "self-congruence",expanding the research application of "self-congruence"in consumer-brand relationships,and also enriching the empirical research of the brand values.Implications for theory are,the research enriches the empirical research of brand values;especially verified the.effects of value congruence on customers' behavioral intentions(self-brand connection,word-of-mouth)serially mediated by consumer-brand identification and brand affect engagement,further distinguishes the relationship between the two constructs.And expands the formation mechanism of self-brand connection from the perspective of brand values.