现有文献大量检验了可信性因素对品牌信任的正向影响作用,但鲜有学者研究影响可信性因素与信任关系的调节变量。与能力不同,友善和正直是两种基于动机和主观感知的可信性因素,它们对品牌信任的影响作用往往会根据消费者主观推断而发生变化。我们识别了可能影响消费者使用可信性信息进行主观推断来形成信任的三种条件,发现消费者的信任倾向、获取品牌信息的不同来源以及品牌关系持续时间加强或弱化了友善(或正直)与品牌信任的正向关系。
The effects on brand trust by perceived benevolence and integrity have been well documented in the marketing literature. However, few efforts have been made to examine how those effects may vary with consumer characteristics and nature of consumer-brand relationship. The present research examines the moderating role of consumers' propensity to trust,their use of information source, and the length of their relationship with the brand. Based on data collected through a large scale survey, we find that integrity has a stronger impact on brand trust for consumers who have low propensity to trust and when consumers mainly rely on objective information source. In contrast, benevolence has a stronger impact on brand trust when consumers rely on personal information source regardless of their propensity to trust. In addition, we find that the effects of integrity and benevolence on brand trust vary with the length of the relationship following a curvilinear pattern. Implications of the findings for researchers and practitioners are discussed.