Research On Driving Factors Of Regional Agricultural Product Brand Loyalty

Brand loyalty is an extremely important concept in the theoretical system of brand. Brand loyalists are valuable intangible assets of enterprises, which can reduce marketing costs, improve brand awareness and increase market share. After years of research on industrial or service brands by foreign scholars, a relatively mature theoretical system of the concept of brand loyalty, the driving factors of brand loyalty and the use of brand loyalty is already established. China is a large agricultural country with a vast territory and a diversity of ecological environments, which provides a good foundation for the development of regional brands of agricultural products. However, China’s regional agricultural product brands subject much to the impact of those well-known foreign agricultural product brands, whose overall level of development is relatively low. Therefore, the development of regional brand loyalty theory produces a strong practical significance. Based on this, the thesis studies China’s regional agricultural product brands with a basic logic of "cognition- attitude- behavior" in order to explore the driving factors of brand loyalty.This study was conducted mainly in the following three parts. The first part is theory review. By reviewing both Chinese and foreign literature, the paper summarizes the definitions of brand loyalty in three different perspectives, namely the attitude perspective, the behavior perspective and the complex perspective, as well as the theoretical model of driving factors of brand loyalty and relevant basic theories of regional agricultural product brands. The second part is model construction and assumption presentation. Based on the literature review, this study constructs the model for the driving factors of regional agricultural product brand with "cognitive- attitude- behavior" as the basic logic. The model consists of five dimensions, namely: brand perception, region perception, perception quality, attitude loyalty and brand loyalty. On this basis, this thesis proposes seven assumptions aiming to demonstrate the theoretical model through empirical research. The third part is empirical research. In combining the existing scale basis, the thesis developed a questionnaire of the model for the driving factors of regional agricultural product brand. 357 valid questionnaires are received by personal investigation of tea consumers. Then we use SPASS17.0 to analyze the survey data, and test relevant assumption conditions of the theoretical model. Combined with the results of empirical research, this study revises the driving factors of regional agricultural brand loyalty model that reflects the path relationship of the formation process of brand loyalty. The main results of this study include the following aspects:First, the formation of regional agricultural product brand loyalty is a complex process. The formation of brand loyalty is influenced by combined effect of four factors-the brand perception, region perception, perception quality and attitude loyalty, among which there is a certain path relationship internally.Second, the attitude loyalty is the only direct driving factors of brand loyalty in the model. The "attitude" dimension is the bridge connecting the "cognitive" and "behavior" dimensions. The real brand loyalty is consistent emotion-oriented purchasing.Third, the region perception plays a vital role in the formation of attitude loyalty. The original growing areas of agricultural products have unique environment and long history. The familiarity with the original growing areas tends to make consumers identify with them emotionally. Moreover, consumers far from home tend to express their homesickness by buying the agricultural products from their home areas.Forth, influence of region perception on perception quality is stronger than that of brand perception. Most high-quality agricultural products are conditioned by natural environments and manufacturing technologies. The non-replicable and non-migratory natural environments and manufacturing technologies lead to stronger perception quality experience of consumers who have good region perceptions after they buy agricultural products.Conclusion above has profound significance for governments to build agricultural product brands and for enterprises to develop brand marketing strategies.