Corporate Image Cognition Influence Perceived Quality and Purchase Intention Empirical Research

doi:10.4236/ib.2013.53B035

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iBusiness, 2013, 5, 162-167

http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/ib.2013.53B035 Published Online September 2013 (http://www.scirp.org/journal/ib)

Corporate Image Cognition Influence Perceived Quality

and Purchase Intention Empirical Research

Jing Li1, Jiang Li2, Yongbiao Zheng2

1Economics and Management School, Tianjin University of Technology and Education, Tianjin, China; 2Economics and Manage-

ment School, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing, China.

Email: [email protected], [email protected],

Received 2013

ABSTRACT

Based on the theory of corporate image and perceived quality, we researched influence of consumers corporate image

cognition on consumers perceived quality and purchase intention. We take the telecoms operator as practical example to

do questionnaire survey and analyze the data with SPSS16.0 and structural equation model; the research results show

that consumers’ corporate image cognition directly and prominently affects perceived quality instead of consumer pur-

chase intention; It also shows that in china marketing environment, the social image of corporate image has the greatest

effect on consumer perceived quality, followed by staff image and marketing image.

Keywords: Corporate Image Cognition; Perceived Quality; Purchase Intention

1. Introduction

As the development of market economy and technology,

the products of different enterprises have tiny difference

at the physical attribute level, Consumers in purchasing

behavior not only rely on the product price, function,

quality and other traditional parameters to choose the

consuming goods, When and where and in which way

the products are produced, and the enterprise image and

other factors have become the influencing factors of the

customers' purchasing behavior. Enterprise began to pay

more and more attention to build the enterprise image,

through setting up the good enterprise image to influence

consumers to its product evaluation to have identity atti-

tude, which can eventually lead to the product of the en-

terprise's preferences and enhance purchase intention,

and eventually to take the purchasing behavior.

The current literatures have less research for enterprise

image on consumer product service quality perception

influence, therefore, through the questionnaire survey we

get a data and use structure equation model to analyze

influence of enterprise image on perceived quality and

purchase intention, which has provided guidance for en-

terprise marketing management.

2. Literature Review

2.1. Definition and Formation of Corporate

Image

The Different scholars have different point of view for

the definition of enterprise image. Nicolas indo（1992）

consider that Enterprise image is combined of all aspects

of the enterprise customers view, and it is determined by

stimulation provided by the enterprise, the individual

cognitive style and circumstance under which cognition

has function. Bai Yongxiu(2001) hold the view that En-

terprise image is a general impression a enterprise or a

community remains in the public mind; it is the compre-

hensive reflection of behavior abilities of behavior sub-

ject. Based on association network memory model,

KELLER (1993) puts forward enterprise image is the

perception of consumer in memory of the cognitive

through association with the brand. Kotler (1991) puts

forward enterprise image is a group of perception, faith

and idea held by one person to an enterprise.

Enterprise activities and its complexity have led cog-

nitive elements of consumers for corporate image are

very complex. Kato bond macro (1989) found that enter-

prise image including technology image, market image,

future-oriented image, company atmosphere image, and

operator image. Based on the correlation network mem-

ory model Brown&Dacin (1997) divided consumer asso-

ciation into company ability association and the company

society responsibility association. LeBlance, Gaston,

Nguyen Nha (1996) found that the service enterprise

image is formed by enterprise identity characteristics,

enterprise reputation, service environment, service level

and the service contact. Fombrun (2000) put forward

enterprise image is formed by emotional appeal cognitive,

Corporate Image Cognition Influence Perceived Quality and Purchase Intention Empirical Research 163

product and service, vision and leadership, working en-

vironment, social and environmental responsibility, fi-

nancial performance; he also designed 20 measuring

project. This paper is based on the research of Fombrun’s

classification.

2.2. Conception of Perceived Quality

Quality research focuses on two aspects: one is based on

the product or manufacturer's objective quality research,

such as total quality management (TQM), according to

external and internal properties of product including du-

rability, safety, design, appearance and other predefined

idealized technology standards enterprise and product

quality experts take objective and impartial evaluation

(Rieszm,1978; Zeithaml, 1988), on the other hand, based

on consumer perception of quality research, some schol-

ars put forward owing to information asymmetry con-

sumers can't get and understand all technical index of

quality evaluation, but according to relevant information

they always can draw their own conclusions to judge the

quality of the products, good or bad. It is the general ab-

stract conclusion that determines the customer’s choice

of the products. In the evaluation of the quality of your

product or service, consumers rarely adopt the objective

quality of the products, but they always adopt the quality

of the consumers perceive to judge the quality of your

product or service (Gokdrick, 1984), Zeitham (1988)

thinks that perceived quality is the overall superiority or

remarkable judgment of consumer to the products. Based

on cue utilization theory, Kirmani (2000)put forward

perceived quality is all the advantages of evaluation of

the brand consumers use internal and external clues. In

the definition of perceived quality, Mitra and Golder

(2006) introduced the conception of quality expected,

that perceived quality comes from consumer oneself or

others experience related to enterprise, marketing infor-

mation, its form is not dependent on the use or inspection

of the product.

3. Study Method and Data Colleting

3.1. Propose Research Hypothesis

According to the cue utilization theory, the cognition of

enterprise image of consumer is one of important clues

that influent consumer to judge the quality of service,

especially when consumer faces new products, important

information will be missing, consumers makes judgment

in the available clues and lack product attributes. In the

market at any time consumers will link company and

products together; this is why many companies apply

brand strategy. when people's product evaluation happens

in situation full of company information, the company

association will become the key framework of evaluation

about the product (WangHaiZhong, 2006), Huang

Heshui (2009) points out that with the real estate disputes

increase, when buying a house consumers will take real

estate developer into account, on the one hand, they try

to find out the credit of the real estate developer, on the

other hand they want to know company scale of real es-

tate developer. Foreign scholars study the effects of all

kinds of company association on consumer reflection,

but the study conclusion are ambiguous, a study showed

that the company image has positive influence on con-

sumer product evaluation and performance (Belch, 1987;

Carlson, 1963), but Hardy (1970) found that the negative

relationship between company image and product pref-

erence, Shimp&Bearden (1982) found the company im-

age did not have a strong influence on consumer reac-

tion.

So we propose the following research hypothesis:

H1：Corporate image cognition has effect on consumer

perceived quality

H2: consumer perceived quality has effect on con-

sumer purchase intention

In the competitive global market, consumers begin

caring about information about the company behind the

product and brand (Philip J. The Kitchen, Andrew Laur-

ence, 2003), good enterprise image can attract more

consumers and increase confidence of customer for

products and services, advertising content and purchase

decisions (Fombrun, 1998; Lafferty&Goldsmith, 1999),

so we put forward:

H3: Corporate image cognition has effect on consumer

purchase intention

3.2. Variable Determination

This research mainly involves three variables: enterprise

image cognition, perceived quality and purchase inten-

tion. referring to the enterprise image measurement index

and scale of Dodds (1991); Fombrun (2001); Cohen

(1963); Manfred (2004) this study measured enterprise

image cognition from the customer orientation, market

performance, staff image, social responsibility, the de-

velopment foreground, emotional appeal six aspects,

designing a total of 16-item to measure it. We measured

perceived quality from the overall evaluation, reliability,

advanced three aspects of three questions. Integrating the

measurement of purchase intention of Michael (1982),

Dodds (1991), we measured purchase intention from

three specific measurement items. All of the question-

naires use likerts' level 5 scale, from "much don't agree"

to "much agreed to" give 1 ~ 5 points score to measure.

3.3. Data Collecting

We chose the telecom enterprise brand and 3G service as

the research object, at first we have a small scale research

Corporate Image Cognition Influence Perceived Quality and Purchase Intention Empirical Research

164

(N = 50), and on the basis that we give necessary refining

word modifying of our questionnaire to enhance the test

ability of questionnaire. In formal investigation we give

out 250 questionnaire with valid questionnaires for 236

copies, effective recovery rate is 94.4%. telecom enter-

prise brand distribution for China Telecom, China Mo-

bile, China Unicom =1：1：1, male accounted for, 61.9%,

female accounted for 38.1%. From profession distribu-

tion: students 44.78%, working people accounted for

55.22%. From the age distribution : <20 years old 8.2%,

20 to 30 years old (79.1%), 31 to 40 to 10.4%, 41 to 50

accounting for 2.2%. Revenue: personal income< 1000

yuan accounted for 31.3%, and from 1000 to 2000

(20.1%), and 2000 to 3000 (18.7%), and 3000-4000

(4.5%), and 4000 to 5000 0.7%, more than 5000 18.7%.

3.4. Data Analysis

1) Analysis of reliability and effectiveness of the scale

Through the Cronbach's a coefficient and Item-to-To-

tal related coefficient we test internal consistency and

reliability of the scale. The preliminary reliability analy-

sis showed that some components’ Cronbach 's a coeffi-

cient is below 0.7 which is the critical value Nunnnally

and Bernstein (1994) recommended, Item-to-Total cor-

relation coefficient tests showed the subject further cuts

can be measured in order to improve the Cronbach' s a

coefficient values. So we have exploratory factor analy-

sis on measurement items of enterprise image and per-

ceived quality, the results in Table 1. KMO statistics is

0.912, Bartlett 's Test results are also significant, which

suggests that it is meaningful to analyze the main com-

ponent of the factor of enterprise image. Using SPSS16.0,

take varimax orthogonal rotation method to carry on

the factor rotating, and extracted features more than 1 of

3 root male factor, a total of 77.761% of the total vari-

ance explained. Factor analysis results see Table 1.

From Table 1 we can see the 16-item can be summed

up in three main factors, according to the size of the

loading of factor to name the three factors of. F1 c12-on

the c17 loading are above 0.6, F2 in c6 -c9 the loading

above 0.8, factor F3 in c2, c4, c10 c11 the loading are

close to or greater than 0.7, we can observe that c2 and

c4 factor loading are not outstanding, therefore, we de-

lete the c3 and c5-item. Combined with the meaning of

each-item, we define the six involved in the variables

hypothesis again, shrinking the scope of the market per-

formance of the enterprise , eliminating the factor of en-

terprise research and development ability; Enterprise

staff cognition image meaning has been widened; Tele-

communication enterprise as a service type of enterprise,

the quality of the service employees and concern for the

customer will directly affect the development of the en-

terprise, so we have put the service of the personnel and

focus on customer's complaint down to enterprise staff

image cognition, that is we divide the enterprise image

cognition into three dimensions: enterprise market per-

formance image cognition, corporate social image cogni-

tion, the image of the enterprise staff cognition. After

deleting the item Cronbach’s a coefficient value range

0.88 to 0.9263, higher than the critical value of 0.7.

Therefore, this research scale has good internal reliabil-

ity.

Table 2 results indicate that comparing the three

groups model, chi-square values exist significant differ-

ences, showing that limited model and not limited model

are significantly different, so we can think that staff im-

age and market image, staff image and social image,

market image and social image of the difference between

the two dimensions of the scale effect degree is high. In

aggregate, enterprise image scale difference validity is

high.

Table 1. Rotated component matrixa.

Component

item

1 2 3

c1 0.167 0.409 0.695

c2 0.470 0.323 0.569

c3 0.256 0.234 0.811

c4 0.585 0.370 0.284

c5 0.263 0.831 0.195

c6 0.119 0.911 0.198

c7 0.149 0.852 0.249

c8 0.182 0.835 0.272

c9 0.403 0.199 0.735

c10 0.364 0.166 0.783

c11 0.842 0.146 0.211

c12 0.832 0.035 0.326

c13 0.869 0.053 0.250

c14 0.737 0.261 0.340

c15 0.774 0.252 0.278

c16 0.652 0.481 0.109

Table 2. Discriminant validity of scale.

Model DFCMINP NFI

Delta-1

IFI

Delta-2

RFI

rho-1

TLI

rho2

Limited

model1 1184.2290.0000.224 0.230 0.281 0.290

Limited

model2 1130.5230.0000.122 0.122 0.126 0.150

Limited

model3 1357.2830.0000.298 0.308 0.358 0.372

Corporate Image Cognition Influence Perceived Quality and Purchase Intention Empirical Research

165

2) Hypothesis testing When creating variables relationship between staff

image, market image, social responsibility image and

purchase intention, model fitting degree didn't pass.

When removing these relations, model fitting degree

effect is good, indicating the assumption that enterprise

image directly has positive influence on purchase inten-

tion is not correct. Table 4 lists the original hypothesis of

model, standardization path coefficient, C.R. value and

hypothesis testing results. In enterprise image dimensions

social image has the biggest impact on the perceived

quality, influence coefficient is 0.65, followed by staff

image, influence coefficient was 0.36, and finally for

market image 0.04.

We put the survey data in Figure 1 model, using co-

variance modeling (AMOS method) to analyze integra-

tion model structure. We can judge that whole fitting

degree of the model is better, see Table 3.

In fitting process, applying maximum likelihood esti-

mation methods of its parameter estimation form path

graph, from Figure 1 software analysis path can see the

following information: the relationship between potential

variables and the observed variables, the relationship

between the latent variables and the latent variables,

model path index, Index error term, index of factor in the

loading results.

Figure 1. Stucture mode l.

Table 3. Model evaluation index.

Absolute fitting index Relative fitting index Brief fitting index

X2/df GFI RMSEANFI IFI CFI PNFI PCFI

reference <2 >0.90 <0.06 >0.90 >0.90 >0.90 >0.50 >0.50

Supposing model 1.444 0.900 0.058 0.939 0.980 0.980 0.621 0.649

Table 4. Standard path and hypothesis result.

hypothesis Standard path C.R. Hypothesis if pass

H1a:staff I Image→perceived quality 0.36 5.427 Y

H1b:market image→perceived quality 0.04 4.824 Y

H1c:social image→perceived quality 0.65 10.592 Y

H2:perceived quality ->purchase intention 0.59 8.385 Y

Corporate Image Cognition Influence Perceived Quality and Purchase Intention Empirical Research

166

4. Conclusions

The purpose of this study is to research the relationship

between enterprise image cognition and consumers per-

ceived quality, our research results confirm our hypothe-

sis, (1) consumer enterprise image cognition influence

the perceived quality and then further influence con-

sumer purchase intention, (2) of the three dimensions of

enterprise image cognition, social responsibility image

has the greatest effect on consumer perceived quality,

followed by staff image, and finally market performance.

This study is different from that of the western scholars,

western scholars study found that (Brown&Dacin, 1997,

1994; KELLER&Aaker Winters, 1998) enterprise social

responsibility has little effect on product attributes per-

ceptions, and companies ability cognition has a bigger

impact on consumer products evaluation and have great

effect on product quality cognition (3) perceived quality

is a significant factor that influence customers' purchas-

ing behavior.

Perceived quality is the important influencing factor of

the consumer purchase intention. The enterprise can in-

fluence the perceived quality by improving the enterprise

image. That whether an enterprise is worth trusting and

has a sense of responsibility are also important factors

influencing the perceived quality of the Chinese con-

sumer. In China's cultural environment the consumer will

not trust product or service of a brand if there is not a

good enterprise as a support. As Chinese market envi-

ronment and the company's regulatory system also need

to be further perfected, all sorts of domestic enterprise

crisis has made consumers not trust the brand enterprise

as before, Chinese consumers will not obsessed with en-

terprise market performance and enterprise ability; an

enterprise market performance is good, its product must

be high quality as the only standard to judge; consumers

pay more and more attention to the social responsibility

of the enterprise image behind product. That whether the

enterprise is honest and credible and whether has a real

concern of consumer demand and participation in public

welfare undertakings to reward the society plays a more

and more important role in consumer judging the product

quality. Managers can show that they are social concern

and willing to social responsibility through charity, de-

veloping pollution-free product and providing equal em-

ployment opportunities. To the public, enterprise of

wider social care may affect their judgment and evalua-

tion of the enterprise.

This study only selected the telecom service providers

3 G service brand, and in real life different industry

products are different, its consumer perception is differ-

ent, and so the promoting significance of conclusion fell.

Further research should be expanded to the selection of

the industry, covering more categories of products, such

as clothing, fast consuming goods and other brands of

product category.

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