Study On The Formation Of Brand Knowledge On The Basis Of Contact Point Management

Brand knowledge is the core of brand equity from consumer perspective, building of brand knowledge has increasingly become one of the main issues of theoretical research and marketing practice. It is of great significance for the brand managers to analyze the consumers' formation path of brand knowledge and identify the mechanism of different contact points on the formation of brand knowledge in order to effectively allocate marketing resource and manage the contact points.Started with the review and summarization of previous research, this thesis analyzes the formation path of brand knowledge. Based on applying content analysis method to identify the contact points, this thesis builds a model on how contact points affect brand knowledge formation.Then this thesis selects the brand of laptop as the object of empirical study, verifies the model with factor analysis, hierarchical regression and structural equation methods.After theoretical analysis and empirical study several conclusions are reached as following:Firstly, brand knowledge,which is the information or evaluation on the brand stored in the mind of consumers, consists of brand awareness, product awareness and brand value recognition, and there is a path in brand awarenessâ†'product awarenessâ†'brand value recognition. Secondly, different contact points have different impacts on brand knowledge formation. Advertisement, service, store experience and word of mouth have a significant effect on brand awareness. The factors influencing brand awareness from big to small are, service, advertisement, store experience and word of mouth. As for the impact on product awareness, advertisement, service and word of mouth have a significant effect on product awareness. The factors influencing product awareness, from big to small, are service, word of mouth, advertisement. The factors which have significant effect on brand value recognition, from big to small, are exhibition, sponsorship.Thirdly, As adjusting variables, the consumer's knowledge and experience adjust the influence of the advertisement on brand awareness as well as the influence of word of mouth on product awareness significantly, which means that as consumer's knowledge and experience increase, the impact of advertisement on brand awareness will be weaker; as consumer's knowledge and experience increase, the impact of word of mouth on product awareness will be increase. Fourthly, it is necessary to apply different package of contact points according to different stages of brand knowledge formation.