اثر تصویر فروشگاه و کیفیت خدمات بر تصویر ذهنی از برند و قصد خرید برای مارک های برچسب خصوصی

This study aims to investigate the direct effects of store image and service quality on brand image and purchase intention for a private label brand (PLB). This study also investigates the indirect effects mediated by perceived risk and price consciousness on these relationships. The sample in this study consisted of three hundred and sixty (360) customers of the Watsons and Cosmed chain of drugstores. The pre-test results identified “Watsons” and “My Beauty Diary” as the research brands of the PLB for the two stores, respectively. This study uses LISREL to examine the hypothesized relationships. This study reveals that (1) store image has a direct and positive effect on the purchase intention of the PLB; (2) service quality has a direct and positive effect on the PLB image; (3) the perceived risk of PLB products has a mediating effect on the relationship between the brand image and the consumers purchase intention of the PLB.

Private label brands, also known as store brands, are brands owned by the distributor and sold in an exclusive store (Kotler and Armstrong, 1996). As the scale of modern distributors grows, their ability to bargain with manufacturers becomes stronger. In addition, as the economic downturn causes a reduction in consumer income, distributors aggressively build a PLB to increase profits and differentiation (Quelch and Harding, 1996 and Richardson et al., 1996). One of the causes for an expanding PLB is that the manufacturers commit to promoting the brand image and transfer the costs to the customers. This raises prices and allows the distributors to participate in the market with lower prices. The annual sales revenue of the PLB worldwide approaches 1 trillion US dollars, and this amount is still increasing (Kumar and Steenkamp, 2007). For retail stores, apart from establishing the differentiation, a PLB can also retain customers and increase yield rate (Hoch, 1996, Private Label Manufacturers’ Association, 1999 and Richardson et al., 1996). Therefore, developing a PLB becomes an important strategy for distributors. Previous studies about the PLB can be divided into two categories. The first category addresses the proneness between the PLB versus national brand promotion (c.f. Hoch, 1996, Narasimhan and Wilcox, 1998 and Quelch and Harding, 1996). Ailawadi et al. (2001) and Garretson et al. (2002) further identified some similarities and differences between the two groups. The second category discusses the factors that influence customer attitude towards, or consumption of the PLB (c.f. Baltas, 2003, Batra and Sinha, 2000, Burton et al., 1998 and Richardson et al., 1996). Research factors appearing in studies in the second category mostly focus on product-level factors and consumer-level factors. Studies on the product-level factors examine product category (DelVecchio, 2001) and perceived risk (Semeijn et al., 2004), whereas studies on the consumer-level factors examine price consciousness (Burger and Schott, 1972, Jin and Suh, 2005 and Sinha and Batra, 1999) and reliance on extrinsic cues (DelVecchio, 2001 and Batra and Sinha, 2000). Although previous studies rarely discuss store-level factors, they are becoming increasingly important (Semeijn et al., 2004). Collins-Dodd and Lindley (2003) and Vahie and Paswan (2006) found that when consumers are unfamiliar with the PLB, they use the store image as the cues for purchasing a PLB. Drawing from attribution theory (Sawyer and Dickson, 1984), the combination of continuously low prices and infrequent professionally developed advertising campaigns might contribute to the traditional belief that the quality of private brands is worse than national brands. Therefore, a store and brand image is a means for reducing these quality associations and extending the PLB’s appeal beyond price sensitive segments. For example, 7-Eleven uses the “Open-Chan” (a promotional figure toy) as a symbol to communicate a friendly store image and enhance the image of its PLB and to attract younger consumers (Qiu, 2006). The service quality of the store is also an important factor influencing the purchasing behavior of customers (Carrillat et al., 2009). Ailawadi and Keller (2004) asserted that retailers could create their brand image by attaching unique association to the quality of their service. Cosmed, a popular chain of drugstores in Taiwan, ensures good quality service by providing consumers with a pleasant physical service environment and a nice shopping experience, successfully enhancing its PLB image (Gao, 2010). However, few previous studies investigate these two factors in the PLB context. This study attempts to fill this gap, at least partially, by examining the effect of the two extraneous variables (store image and service quality) on the brand image and purchase intention of the PLB. Consumers choose the brand with a better image to reduce the perceived risk. This affects the level of price consciousness and on the purchase intention (Dowling and Staelin, 1994, Rothe and Lament, 1973 and Sinha and Batra, 1999). Therefore, perceived risk and price consciousness may be the mediator for the PLB image and the purchase intention. However, previous related empirical studies are rare and they primarily focus only on the mediating effect of price consciousness (Tseng and Hwang, 2003). Another contribution of this study is to integrate and examine the direct and indirect effects mediated by both the perceived risk (a product-level factor) and price consciousness (a consumer-level factor) of the PLB image on purchase intention. In summary, this study investigates the direct effects of store image and service quality on brand image and purchase intention for the private label brand. This paper also then examines the indirect effects mediated by perceived risk and price consciousness on these relationships. Fig. 1 displays the conceptual framework of this study. Full-size image (23 K) Fig. 1. Conceptual framework.

The existing literature suggests that the image and service quality of the store will respectively affect the image and purchase intension of the PLB. The results of this research shows that when simultaneously examining these relationships, the store image directly affects the purchase intention of PLB (H2), but not PLB image (H1); on the contrary, service quality directly affects the PLB image (H3), but not the purchase intension of PLB (H4). These results also show that compared with store image, service quality is better able to positively influence the purchase intension of PLB (See Table 5). However, it is necessary to mediate this effect by enhancing the PLB image (H3) and reducing the perceived risk of the PLB products (H5). Contrarily, the store image can directly affect the purchase intention of the PLB products. Therefore, it is clear that the store image directly affects the sales volume of the products (including PLB products) in the store. However, service quality can only affect the purchase intention of the PLB products indirectly through the PLB image. Furthermore, since both the store image and the PLB image have a positive influence on the purchase intention of the PLB, it implies that when consumers are making decision about the purchase of a PLB, the images of the store and of PLB play very important roles. Previous studies suggest that PLB image directly or indirectly affects the purchase intension of PLB. This study shows that when simultaneously examining these two effects, the indirect effect through the mediation of perceived risk (H5 and H8) outperforms the direct effect (H6). The study also verifies the negative effect of perceived risk on consumers’ price consciousness (H7) and purchase intention of the PLB (H8) in existing literature. Finally, this research finds that the effect of perceived risk (H8) on the purchase intension of the PLB outperforms the price consciousness effect (H9), which previous studies neglect.