Brand trust should contain two meanings: Brand trust is essentially a merchant's commitment to consumers. From the brand's external image to its internal quality, it should show a responsible attitude towards consumers. If a company unilaterally believes that customers are easy to fool, thereby destroying its consistent commitment to consumers (such as false quality promotion, exaggerated advertising, lack of sincere service, etc.), it will harm the interests of consumers and bring about consequences. The consequences are a decline in brand reputation and a shift in brand preference. Therefore, a brand, as a promise, should be based on the mentality that companies will not take opportunistic actions and deliberately take advantage of consumers.

The one-way effect of brand trust

Elena Delgado-Ballester (2001) and others conducted regression analysis and multivariate analysis on a sample of 173 buyers, and the results showed that: The key role of brand trust is to generate customer commitment, especially in high-involvement purchase situations, where it has a stronger effect than overall satisfaction.

The two-way effect of brand trust

Abdelmajid amine (1998) believes that the two main outcome variables that influence brand loyalty on customer attitudes and behaviors are customer trust in the brand and Positive communication for the brand (or support for the brand). The two outcome variables appear to be correlated, so when people develop trust in a brand to which they are committed, they tend to prevent negative perceptions of the brand or spread positive information and incite others to buy the brand. In turn, brand trust will further strengthen brand loyalty. Customers' trust in a certain brand enables them to stick to the brand they have always purchased and to resist brand transfer behavior, even if the brand has been somewhat flawed or uncompetitive for a period of time or has encountered negative information dissemination. The same is true with time. When competing with competing brands, or when the price of the brand's products changes slightly due to short-term reasons for the brand's image, the vast majority of loyal customers are rarely inclined to deviate from the brand they have always purchased. . It can be seen that brand trust and brand loyalty are interconnected and influence each other, forming a two-way mechanism.

The contingency view of brand trust

According to the commitment-trust theory (Morgan and Hum, 1994). Relationship commitment and brand trust are the key mediating variables (KMV) that lead to the success of relationship marketing. They are related to five conditional variables (relationship termination costs, relationship benefits, shared value, communication, opportunistic behavior) and five outcome variables ( Identification, termination tendency, collaboration, functional conflict, uncertainty) play a key mediating role, and brand trust also directly affects relationship commitment. In this sense, Garbarino and Johnson (1999) have pointed out that satisfaction and trust play different roles in predicting the future purchase intentions of different consumers (low-relationship customers and high-relationship customers).

Brands potentially play many roles in influencing consumer choice behavior. One of the important factors that affects consumer choice behavior is consumers' uncertainty about product attributes or product benefits. Consumers' uncertainty about products mainly stems from asymmetric or incomplete product information. Consumers know much less about products than companies do. In this environment, brands play a key role in how consumers understand, encode, and evaluate brand messages.

The impact of brand trust on consumer price sensitivity

Tulin Erdem et al. (2O02) studied the impact of brand trust on consumer price sensitivity. They tested two hypotheses: the buffering effect of brand trust on consumer price sensitivity, and specific product classification factors will affect the effect size of brand trust on consumer choice and price sensitivity, and reached the following conclusion: < /p>

(1) When consumers are unsure about product attributes or benefits and obtain asymmetric information in the market, the impact of price on consumer utility is buffered by brand trust;

< p>(2) Product category factors play an important role in the impact of brand trust on consumer price sensitivity. In products that require long-term consumption experience, when simple external product information cannot reduce consumers' high uncertainty, the effect of brand trust on consumers' price sensitivity is greater.

The results of the study also indicate that brand trust has a significant impact on consumer price sensitivity in high-risk and high-input product categories.

Influencing factors of brand trust

In order to establish consumers' brand confidence, make consumers really like their brand, and achieve the purpose of improving brand loyalty, in addition to a deep understanding of brand trust In addition to the connotation, we should further understand the factors that affect consumers' brand trust. According to the research on brand trust issues by domestic and foreign scholars, factors affecting consumer brand trust can be considered from four aspects: In order for a brand to gain the trust of consumers, it is also necessary to consider whether the brand can be psychologically accepted and recognized by consumers. . To this end, in the process of brand planning, design and promotion, we must also consider the degree of integration of the brand and consumer psychology based on the social and cultural background of the target customers. For example, when Haier Group sold its home appliances to the Arab region, it made necessary adjustments to the trademarks of its products: it made the "Haier" brothers who only wore underwear dress up. Because in the eyes of Arabs, not wearing clothes is a symbol of barbarism and a violation of their national religious beliefs. For another example, when Taiwan's Dinghong Group invested in the development of "Master Kong" fast food in the mainland, it fully considered the psychology of the mainland people from brand design to advertising: the concept of "healthy" life and the affectionate title of "Master". It has understood the connotation of the "Master Kong" brand and won widespread recognition among mainland consumers.

Countermeasures to build consumer brand trust

Improve the intrinsic quality of brand products

Brand trust is a multi-dimensional and multi-level concept, among which brand quality is another It is the main part that constitutes the brand trust dimension. Quality is the fundamental guarantee for the continuation and development of a brand. If we talk about brand without quality, the brand is just a pattern or symbol designed by the enterprise. It will eventually be buried by the market and abandoned by consumers. The "Qinchi" wine blended with alcohol and the "Chundu" brand ham sausage, nicknamed "noodle sticks" due to its high starch content, have become short-lived products due to quality issues. To this end, companies must strengthen quality awareness and form the concept that everyone values ??and cares about quality, thereby laying a solid foundation for brand trust. At the same time, enterprises should also strengthen standardized quality management and quality safety awareness through quality certification systems, internal monitoring systems, expert recommendations and industry awards activities, and communicate this information to customers in a timely manner to enhance customers' brand confidence.

Establish a good brand image

To improve brand trust, we must not only consider the maintenance of brand quality, but also rely on the shaping of brand image. Only by implementing high-quality projects and improving both internal and external Form a strong brand. Building a brand image is another arduous project for enterprises. It requires enterprises to "intensive cultivation" and continuous innovation on the basis of solid and meticulous work to achieve it. Specifically, the shaping of the brand image includes three aspects: First, with the goal of improving the comprehensive strength of the enterprise, we focus on every operational detail, expand the sales scale of products, establish a wide range of sales outlets, and continuously develop new products that suit customer needs. . The second is to do a good job in channel construction, close the relationship between enterprises and middlemen, strictly implement the rebate and assessment system, improve the quality and ability of channel members, and build good and smooth channels for the external distribution of brand products. The third is to pay attention to the packaging and appearance design of brand products, guide consumption with a vivid and intuitive brand visual image, and play the role of "silent salesman" of brand products. The fourth is to give full play to the role of the media and increase brand promotion efforts to further expand the social influence of branded products. Among them, full attention should be paid to the role of "soft" advertising-news reports, public relations, etc. in brand promotion. Compared with overwhelming commercial advertisements, customers recognize the authority and fairness of these "soft" advertisements.

Establish a customer-first service concept

Good brand trust requires companies to be market-oriented and form a customer-first service concept. If you can feel that the company cares about you all the time and does things based on your own interests, customers will fully trust the company, and the trust of the brand will naturally increase. For example, Haier has combined the demand characteristics of rural areas in western my country to tailor-make a "washing machine" that can wash sweet potatoes and a "washing machine" that can make butter tea, which fully reflects the company's care for the "farmers" and "herdsmen" friends in the western region. Love, thus winning a good reputation.

Pay attention to consumers’ spiritual feelings when using brands

In the process of implementing brand strategies and developing new products, companies, in addition to considering brand quality, brand image, and strengthening service concepts, We should also pay attention to consumers' brand usage experience, because it is the psychological basis for consumers to form trust in the brand and is the key to whether consumers can form a high degree of brand identity. As an enterprise, especially a large enterprise with a well-known brand, it is necessary to learn to put yourself in the shoes of consumers and deeply grasp the psychological pulse of consumers. Enterprises can put themselves in their shoes and think about it: Suppose I am a customer who has admired a certain brand of product on the market for a long time and bought it with confidence. However, within a few days it was full of malfunctions; Can I accept this result if I cannot get a satisfactory solution when I come to my door? For this reason, companies must pay attention to the deep exploration of customer psychology, treat customers with a sincere attitude, and ultimately achieve customer satisfaction. Brand image is the public's reflection of the brand's existence form, with consumers as the main body. It is the public's summary and evaluation of the connotation and characteristics of the brand. Generally speaking, a good brand image can play the psychological function of enhancing awareness, patronizing purchases and motivating employees. To this end, companies should increase efforts to cultivate brand image to create a good word-of-mouth effect. To achieve this, companies can make efforts in terms of operating strength, brand appearance design, channel relationships and brand promotion.

First of all, we should consider building our own market image by expanding product sales scope, increasing market share, improving the company's product innovation capabilities, etc., and forming a favorable competitive situation of "I am the only one" and "Who else is better than me" . Secondly, we should consider increasing the intensity of brand product appearance design and leaving a profound visual image to consumers with distinctive and personalized packaging. Third, strengthen channel relationship building. The main thing is to properly handle the power and responsibility relationship between the enterprise and channel members. Any branded product is distributed externally through certain distribution channels. Whether the channel is smooth is directly related to the sales efficiency of brand products. For this reason, in the formulation and implementation of channel policies, the rights and responsibilities between enterprises and channel members (suppliers, agents, wholesalers, retailers, etc.) must be clearly distinguished; if product problems arise, consumers must not be Regardless of the blame game, we should do our best to jointly maintain a good image of brand products among customers. Finally, brand products must be comprehensively promoted through a variety of communication methods (such as advertising, news reports, etc.) to expand the social influence of the products and create a good public opinion atmosphere that accepts brand products.