Agenda

Seminar held by Yoko Sugitani, Associate Professor, Faculty of Economics, Sophia University, Japan and visiting Scholar at the Department of Management

Abstract:

Consumers form brand attitudes for numerous reasons. For example, they might feel positive toward a brand that has significant practical value to them. Consumers might also have favorable attitudes toward a brand based on its reputation among family members or friends. Which of these reasons could develop strong and positive brand attitudes? This is an important issue because every company wants to understand how to build a strong and positive brand attitude. To address this question, a new schema comprising of “self-based” and “public-based” evaluations was suggested as a foundation for brand attitudes in addition to the conventional “emotional” and “cognitive” evaluations. The hypothesis was as follows: “self-based emotion” could be the most important attitudinal factor among the four constructs, namely, self-based emotion, self-based cognition, public-based emotion, and public-based cognition. The results of global surveys and experiments consistently supported it. The findings contribute to the academic theories regarding processes by which attitudes are formed, and provide practitioners with insights into what they should appeal to in brand advertisements.