The Influence Of Group Label Of Brand On Purchase Intention:The Role Of Goal-Pursuit

In real life,companies often use the influence of reference group as the group label of brand to enhance consumers' purchase intention and brand evaluation.In return,Consumers also rely on reference group to make better decisions.Previous studies have shown that consumers' membership reference group and aspirational reference group can be regarded as positive reference group which positively influence consumers' evaluation of brands.In the practice of marketing,aspirational reference group are most commonly used in advertising.However,in recent years,lots of companies pay more attention to the influence of membership reference group.It is worth noting that people's consumption behaviour is goal-oriented and always has a certain purpose,especially for some self-management goals.People expect to achieve their ideal state by using the product related to the target.Goal pursuit is a dynamic and staged process.Previous research on reference groups was based on a static perspective.Therefore,it is necessary to discuss and analyze consumer's preference for the group label of brand from a dynamic perspective.Based on the research of reference groups,goal pursuit,and goal structure theory,this study mainly explores consumer's preference of group label of brand under different goal pursuit stages.And the impact of instrumental value which acts as the mediator.This study is going to carry out two empirical experiments.Experiment 1 conducted a field study by recruiting participants who were actually at different stages of goal pursuit and using a real brand.Experiment 2 conducts a laboratory experiment to manipulates participants' feeling for different stages of goal pursuit and a virtual brand is used.Experiment 2 also tests the mediating role of the instrumental value.The results show that at the initial stage of goal pursuit,consumers have higher purchase intention for the product with membership group label of brand compared with aspirational group label of brand.While,at the advanced stage of goal pursuit,consumers have higher purchase intention for the product with aspirational group label of brand.The instrumental value plays the mediating role in this process.The results extend the research on the impact of reference groups on consumers in a dynamic perspective with the help of the theory of goal pursuit which also have practical implications for entrepreneurs and consumers.