A Study On The Impact Of Perceived Quality Of Private Brand On Store Image

When the retailers'single-goods sales increasing to a certain degree which is larger than the best production quantity. The retailers will develop their private brand to get higher profit margins and to control the channels. As China's retailers growing larger, single-goods sales increasing, in order to improve profitability and to shape the differences with other shops, to shape their own unique,continued competitive advantages, our retailers have also begun to learn from large retailers abroad, to develop private brand goods.Just as the retailers in foreign countries start to develop private brands, when the local retailers develop private brands, the products were "low cost, low quality", they were thought to be low cost, low quality and high risk by consumers. Would this private brand product which was thought to be poor quality like to affect the retailer's store image? As store image will affect customer satisfaction, customer trust and customer loyalty, if the development of a low-quality private brand product reduced the retailer's store image, it will lead to very serious consequences for the retailers.When researchers concerned about this issue, they often study on how retailer's store image influence their private brand. The general perspective is that store image will influence the perceived quality of the private brand and the perceived value of the private brand, and then will affect the consumers'attitude and buying intense to private brand products. Also some experts have proved that there is positive correlation between store image and perceived quality of private brand, and it is significant. The study on how does the private brand influence store image is still during the stage of theoretical description, there is no empirical research scholars.This study works on the basis of previous studies. From the summarizing and concluding the literatures about the relationship between perceived quality of private brand and store image, the author summarized the common viewpoints of many scholars'about the store image's dimensions', through logical inference they got the assumption of this study: the raise of perceived quality of private brand will improve store image. And then the author proved the assumption which has a causal relationship through experiments. This study, in the form of case studies, through the methods of logical inference and experimental, explored if the perceived quality of private brand would influence store image, would the raise of perceived quality of private brand improve store image. Based on the experimental data, this study also explored how does the perceived quality of private brand affected store image.Referring to many literatures about the dimensions of store image, the author find an interesting thing: Although scholars have different opinions on the dimensions of store image, most of them believe that product should be an important dimension of store image. Private brand product, which is also one kind of product sold in retail stores, through deductive reasoning, can also affect store image; and private brand, which is only sold in the retailer's store or the channels controlled by the retailer, as an important means to create differences with other stores, it can be said to be the extension of the retailer brands, and has a special relationship with the retailer. It is easy for consumers to link private brand and certain retailer, and the perceived quality of private brand by the consumers will also influence store image. Then we can get our hypothesis of this study: the raise of the perceived quality of private brand will improve store image.According to the specific conditions of this study, the author had adjusted the Solomon four-group design. This study divided the students into three groups randomly, stimulated the experimental group to improve the perceived quality of private brand, and then we'd like to observe whether is any differences between the pre-test and the post-test of store image. For the control group, the author would not give any stimulation; and for the third group, the author would not do any pre-test to rule out any factors which would like to affect the internal validity.The experimental results show that, excluding the impact of factors such as testing, the changing of store image had met the requirements of the three conditions which can make assumptions established: the post-test of the first group scored significantly higher than the pre-test of the first group; The post-test of the first group scored significantly higher than the post-test of the second group; the post-test of the third group's scores were significantly higher than the pre-test of the second group. It proves the assumption that the raise of perceived quality of private brand will improve store image.Based on the experimental data, this study also tested how the perceived quality of private brand influence store image. In the experimental group, when the author test the differences of the scores of the dimensions of store image between the pre-test and the post-test, they had a higher evaluation for the product quality, choice range, convenience and prices. Only the product quality of the dimensions scoring change significantly; It has no positive impact on employee services and atmosphere.This paper suggested when the retailers develop private brand; they should jump out of the trap of low-cost competition, and enhance the quality management level, developing high-quality private brand products. They should change the consumers'thought about private brand as "low quality, low price, high-risk ", and establish the same position as manufacture brand on quality. At the same time, in addition to improving the objective quality of private brand, the paper suggested retailers to send information of private brand to consumers through a variety of channels, so as to make consumers becoming familiar with private brand. And through organizing actions to let consumers taste private brand products, increasing the perceived quality of private brand, in order to improve their store image, thus affecting customer satisfaction, customer trust and customer loyalty.