Research On The Impact Of Business-Customer Interaction On Brand Equity Of Retailers

In recent years,with the development of electronic commerce and multimedia interactive technology,the online retail channel realized by the Internet has been gradually improved.A number of practices show that retailers,based on online retail channels and offline physical stores,are more successful than single-channel retailers.According to the China association of chain operation in 2017 issued the"2016 China top chain",in 2016 online sales of enterprises have been nearly 120 billion RMB,an increase of 69%over the previous year,accounting for 5.7%of the total amount of the company sales.Among them,the mobile sales have accounted for 56.7 percent of online sales,up 16.1 percent from the previous year.This shows that multi-channel retail strategy is the inevitable choice for retailers.Under the background of multiple channels,traditional retailers have expanded to online quickly such as Suning,Gome,going to the mode of entity and store,being in the hope of online consumers "browse or buy".However,with the main characteristics and consumer behavior changes,more and more consumers choose between a channel information search,comparison,in another channel to purchase,consumers are no longer loyal to retailers,and not as a preferred to retailer,the retailer brand equity has further weaken.In the face of this severe situation,how to promote the retailer's appeal,how to effectively segment with competitors,and further strengthen the retailer brand equity has become a question to be solved for retailers.Business-customer interaction as a stimulus activity is of great significance to prompt consumers to make decisions and effectively support retailers' related sales.When retailers are expanding online,retailers are trying to use the way retailers interact with consumers while consumers competing information searches and buying as a first choice.However,in the process of interaction between retailers and consumers,the interaction between business and customers can not achieve the desired result,due to insufficient understanding of consumers and insufficient ability of their own.This is a problem partly for retailers that are actively implementing online expansion.Therefore,it is necessary to explore the influence mechanism of business-customer interaction on retailer brand equity and seek to improve the brand equity of retailers.At present,the research of academia on retailer brand equity,mainly from the marketing mix factors,customer experience,corporate image,brand extension study of its impact on brand equity.On the marketing mix factors,scholars choose from the marketing strategy to study its influence on the retailer's brand equity through mathematical model.In the customer experience,scholars choose to start with the perceived service quality to study its impact on brand equity.In the corporate image,scholars choose from the dimension of image to study on brand equity and its dimensions.In terms of brand extension,scholars choose to start with the strategy of extension,and study its impact on the brand equity and company market value and consumer value of the retailer.But few scholars have studied business-customer from the perspective of trust(online trust and offline trust)and the service ability of retailers to study business-customer interaction on the retail brand equity.Therefore,from the retailer service perception ability and trust(online and offline trust)perspective to explore the business-customer interaction influence on retail brand equity,has the important function and meaning for enriching the retailer brand equity research.Basing on literature review,This chapter construct the model of Business-Customer Interaction and retailer Brand Equity,adopting the Churchill(1979)scale development process to carry out the corresponding scale development.The following conclusions are as followed:(1)The dimensions of businesses-customer interaction(interactive functionality,interactive informativity,interactive responsibility,interactive autonomy)on trust(trust online and offline trust)has significant differences.Interactive informativity has a significant positive effect on online trust,and it has positive correlation with offline trust.Interactive responsibility has a significant positive effect on online trust,and it has positive correlation with offline trust.Interactive autonomy has a significant positive effect on online trust,and it has positive correlation with offline trust.Interactive functionality has no significant positive effect on online trust,and it has no positive correlation with offline trust.(2)Online trust has no significant positive impact on the retailer's brand equity,and offline trust has a significant positive impact on retailers' brand equity.(3)The dimensions of business-customer interaction(interactive functionality,interactive informativity,interactive responsibility,and interactive autonomy)have significant differences in the brand equity of retailers.Interactive information,interactive responsibility and interactive autonomy have significantly affected retailers' brand equity.The interaction functionality has no significant positive effect on the retailer's brand equity.(4)The dimensions of business-customer interaction(interactive functionality,interactive informativity,interactive responsibility,interactive autonomy)have significant differences in perceived retailer service capabilities.Interactive informativity,interactive responsibility and interactive autonomy significantly affect the ability of perceived retailers.Interactive functionality has no significant positive effect on perceived retailer service capability.(5)Perceptive retailer service ability is significantly positive for retailer's brand equity.(6)The involvement plays a mediating effects among interactive informativity,interactive responsibility,interactive autonomy and perceived retailer service ability.(7)Store image plays a mediating effect between business-customer interaction and offline trust.(8)Perceived retailer service ability has significantly positively effect between online trust and offline trust.Through discussion,this paper argues that multi-channel retailers should establish and improve the interaction between consumers and retailers.To guide consumers reasonably and effectively;Actively create a good physical store image;Make full use of the emotional bonds of trust and actively maintain the bilateral relations between consumers and retailers;Actively training the retailer's service capacity;Constantly improve the synergy between different channels.The innovation point of this paper:first,construct the mode of business-customer interaction on retailer brand equity.Basing on the research results of business-customer interaction and retailer brand equity,this paper constructs the influence mechanism of business-customer interaction on retailer's brand equity.On this basis,this paper will be introduced to the store image and involvement in model studies,studying store image playing a mediating between business-customer interaction and trust,and the involvement playing a mediatingbetween business-customer interaction and perceived retailer service ability,comprehensively analysing the relationship among business-customer interaction,trust,perceived retailer service ability and the retailers' brand equity,and exploring the relationship between direct and indirect paths.Secondly,the measurement scale of the service capacity of the perceived retailer is presented.Based on the concept of service capability,this paper defines the perceived retailer service as the effective and efficient delivery service for multi-channel retailers.Subsequently,the four dimensions of the service ability of the perceived retailer were identified through interviews,namely information ability,transaction capacity,remedial ability and integration ability.On this basis,referencing to Churchill(1979)scale development method and process,this paper puts forward the measurement scale of perceived retailer service ability,and through the corresponding data collection to perceive the retailer service capacity measurement scale reliability and validity test.Third,deepen the multi-channel retailer background business-customer interaction understanding.Past studies of online business-customer interaction,more from the perspective of retailer website interactions with customers,consumers and the retailers interaction,mainly from the perceived ease of use,perceived risk and other factors to study the influence on consumer behavior.In this paper,basing on business-customer interaction,through mixing the retailer website and the customer interaction,consumers and retailers interation,from the process of interaction,it divides the business-customer interaction into interactive functionality,interactive informativity,interactive responsibility and interactive autonomy four dimensions,and studies its influence on retailer brand equity.In the process of research,introducing of mediation variables trust,studying the impact business-customer interaction on online trustand offline trust,and the impact trust online and offline trust on retailer brand equity,it exerts synergy between channels.