关键词: 品牌印象, 类别信息, 个别化信息

Abstract: Brand impression is the partial or whole information of a brand in the consumer’s mind that comes from consumer’s perception and experience. Brand impression formation involves both of category-based processes and attribute-based processes（schematic and categorical approaches vs. fully attribute-oriented approaches）, but its cognition processes model is still controversial. Common sense suggests that consumers do not use just one strategy to understand a brand, they use a variety of strategies. People often make sense of brand by categorizing it, and, consequently, consumer’s impressions of brand are often primarily based on stereotypes and categories. Alternatively, consumers sometimes make sense of brand by focusing instead on the brand’s own particular individuating characteristics, forming impressions based on the brand’s attributes that go beyond category membership. Two kinds of theories are introduced, one of them is the information integration theory of the brand impression formation, this approach show the view that one’s impression of a brand reflects an integration of the information known to characterize that brand, for example, consumer form brand impression based on the overall Gestalt of the brand or based on the attributes of the brand as elements; the other is a continuum of impression formation, from category-based to individuating processes. It is necessary to distinguish between category-based, top-down processes on the one hand, and attribute-based, bottom-up processes on the other hand. Fiske and Neuberg (1990) suggested that impression formation occurs along a continuum ranging from fully category-based processes to fully attribute-based processes, they assumed that the two represent the extreme endpoints of a continuum that also has intermediate kinds of processes. The empirical research works on Brand Impression Formation mainly embodied in the brand image and brand personality studies, etc. On the basis of comparative analysis, the viewpoint was provided that whether brand image research or brand personality research, what they studied were the consumer’s subjective impression of the objective properties of brand, its essence is the research on consumer’s brand impression. The conception of the brand image was that products had a social and psychological nature as well as a physical one, and that the sets of feelings, ideas and attitudes that consumers had about brands, their "image" of brands, were crucial to purchase choice. Meanwhile, some scholars consider that salient brand personality dimensions may affect consumer perceptions of personality traits of the owner of the brand. An effect exists involving the transfer of brand personality traits to consumer personality traits via a process of impression formation (Fennis & Pruyn, 2007). Brand impression is the basis of the relationship between brand and consumers. The task of brand construction is to accumulate the brand equity by regulating and controlling consumer’s brand cognition, brand association, brand attitude, brand trust and brand loyalty, based on understanding of the psycho-mechanism of brand impression formation deeply.

Key words: Brand Impression, Category-based Information, Individuating Information