认知与发展心理学研究室知识库

品牌已经成为现代营销组合中的核心因素。品牌知识由于对品牌拥有者、创造者和传播者以及对消费者都具有重要的意义而备受理论研究人员和市场营销实践者的关注。由此而产生的一个重要问题就是，消费者的品牌知识是如何发生发展的？本研究首先梳理已有关于品牌知识的文献，发现众多的研究者由于实验目的的不同，使用研究方法的不同而构建出不同的品牌知识模型，这些模型大都是基于记忆的联结网络模型。本研究根据联结网络模型重点回顾了三个层次的品牌知识：品牌的鉴别意义、品牌的线索意义和品牌的象征意义。根据任务的要求，本研究选取了可能出现品牌认知转折点的7到11岁儿童为目标群体，通过三个子研究、七个实验围绕品牌知识的三层框架展开。 研究一通过三个实验探讨儿童对品牌的鉴别意义的认知发展，通过三个指标反映出：当面对多个维度构成的商品时，9岁以上的儿童可以更多、更先、更快的关注到品牌的维度。 研究二通过两个实验来探讨儿童对品牌的线索意义的认知发展，通过四个指标反映出：当被要求评价商品某些特征时，9岁以上的儿童可以通常使用商品的品牌维度作为判断的依据，并且并不过分扩展品牌的线索意义。 研究三通过两个实验来探讨儿童对品牌的象征意义的认知发展，通过三个指标反映出：当被要求评价品牌使用者某些特征时，9岁以上的儿童通常使用品牌作为判断依据，但儿童对品牌象征意义的认知还有待深化。 总之，综合以上三项研究结果，本研究认为，基于品牌鉴别、线索和象征意义的探索，7-11岁儿童的品牌知识的发展总体趋势是：儿童对品牌的认知在9岁左右会发生一次重要的转折，并且随着年龄的增长，儿童的品牌认知还会发生改变和提高。

Brand was seen as one of the core elements of marketing mix. Consumer’s brand knowledge is attracting increasing concern from both the marketing researcher and practitioner because that it is not only significant for the brand producer, owner but also for the consumer. Then, a related question is when do these brand knowledge be acquired and how do they develop? Researchers developed many models about brand knowledge for diverse aims and by using diverse methods. In this research, literatures about brand knowledge were reviewed and a three-tier hierarchical model of brand knowledge which based on the associative network model of memory was developed: brand identify, cue utilization and symbolic aspects. To explore the development of children’s brand knowledge, seven experiments were designed based on this three-tier hierarchical model and 7-11 years old children were selected for they have the potential to pass the selected tasks. Three experiments were designed in study 1 to explore when children use brand as criteria to classify products by three indexes. We found that children over 9 years old could use brand as criteria to classify products sooner and earlier, and more frequently when they were presented with products which include many attributes, such as color and shape, but children under 9 years old were more apt to use other attributes of products to classify products. The result was robust no matter whether well known the brands were. Two experiments were designed in study 2 to explore when children use brand as cue to judge the perceived quality and price premium of the products by four indexes. We found that children over 9 years old thought the products with already well-known brands were better in perceived quality and higher in price than products with less-known brands, moreover, they recognized steadily the association between brands and perceived quality and price premium of products but did not overgeneralize this association to all the attribute of products, such as the weight of products; the children under 9 years old did not use any coincident cues to judge the perceived quality and price premium of the products. Two experiments were designed in study 3 to explore when children recognize the symbolic aspects of brand by four indexes. We found that 9-year-old children thought the users of already well-known brands were associated with higher academic achievement and be a socially popular individual, on the contrary, the 11-year-old children thought that the users of less-known brands were associated with higher academic achievement and be a socially popular individual. But the children’s association between brands and user’s characteristic were still weak for they could not associate the brands and user’s characteristic unconsciously. When the connection between brands and users were indirect or subliminal, some appearance of users but not the brands would affect children’s judgment. The children under 9 years old did not use any coincident cues to judge the user’s characteristic. All in all, we found that the children’s brand knowledge reached a turning point at about 9 years old, although children’s recognition still could be changed and improved as they got older.