A Study On The Influence Of Brand Overlap On Consumer's Brand Attitude From The Perspective Of Consumers

Domestic apparel market in recent years can be described as both stagnant and dynamic.On the one hand,the apparel brands have been underperforming,and their market gradually transferred from the first-tier cities to the second even third tier cities and rural areas,the number of their stores have been decreasing year after year,all the rage of mainstream clothing brands in domestic market have shown unable to meet the needs of the market.On the other hand,formating of new pattern in domestic apparel market has accelerated by presence of foreign clothing brands,which not only intensifies the competition,but also provides some suggestive vitalities and development factors for domestic apparel brands.Fast fashion brand is one of the most eye-catching development factors.They almost subvert the consumption view and habits in young consumers who live in first-tier city.Therefore,similar brands have logged in the Chinese market in the past decade.In addition to H & M and Zara,which can not be ignored when fast fashion mentioned,there appears an endless stream of many other brands,such as UNIQLO and its brand GU,New Look from British,C & A from Netherlands.But also,consumers are gradually aware of the flaws of these brands,the most critical problem is the similarity in products between different brands.Scholars who studied the fast fashion brand also explained this point,which raises the study of Brand Overlap phenomenon in the apparel industry.Although similar problem was first proposed in 1989,researches were based on niche overlap theory in ecology and measuring method of niche overlap was used to measure the market brand overlap.Therefore,There lacks authoritative research on a series of concepts about brand overlap.Moreover,few scholars study how consumers respond to this phenomenon,and whether the perception of this phenomenon will affect consumer's brand attitude and so on.This article takes the development of fast fashion clothing brand as background,and fast fashion target consumer as the research object.We build brand overlapping dimension model and determine all the specific measurement indicators.Finally,study of the relationship between other dimansions of brand overlap and brand attitude was carried out.The main conclusions are as follows:(1)Performance dimensions of brand overlap are constructed.We summarized apparel brand overlap dimensions as five aspects.They are customer experience,product identification,design concepts,brand images and brand attitude.We found that consumers will perceive brand overlaping in fast fashion brands through customer experience,product recognition and brand image.Design concept isn't considered because,compared with other apparel brands,fast fashion brands do not have a clear design concept,so there will be considerable uncertainty in the indicator system and the degree of consumer perception.(2)Study the effects of brand overlap on the three aspects of consumer brand attitude.They are cognition,affection and behavioral intention.We use factor analysis and structural equation modeling(SEM)to analyse data of 492 respondents and study the effects of brand overlap on consumer cognition,affection and behavioral intention.It is found that brand overlap can affect brand attitudes to varying degrees.In contrast,the factors of product identification and brand image have more significant impact on consumer brand attitude,while the impact of customer experience is not obvious.Results of this study provide guidance for brand management of fast fashion apparel.Firstly,the phenomenon of brand overlap can be used deliberately to enter the market by potential fast fashion brand with the help of similary products in different brands;Secondly,the brand overlap dimension model of apparel industry can help fast fashion brand to measure the level of their brand overlaping and provide fast fashion brands a flexible evaluation system to evaluate consumer perception of brand overlap;Finally,make suggestions for fast fashion brands that they should start to create highlights for products and shape brand value to aviod the disadvantages of brand overlap phenomenon.Especially for the fast fashion brands that have developed a long time and have occupied a part of the market,it is urgent to bridge a gap from other brands as well as maintain its development capacity.