Abstract
Extant research in social cognition has utilized perceived entitativity to discuss group perceptions and identified eight antecedents for the group entitativity, including interaction, importance, outcomes, goals, similarity, duration, size, and permeability. On-line processing is activated if the groups are perceived as high entitative groups, whereas memory-based processing is elaborated if the groups are perceived as low entitative groups. As the cognitive processes underlying the evaluations of social objects including groups and products are common, it is expected that the influences of perceived entitativity on group perceptions also apply to brand perceptions. Thus, capitalizing on the perceived entitativity theory, this research examines the applicability of the eight properties of group entitativity for brand evaluations.
The eight properties of perceived entitativity were utilized to measure 40 prestigious consumer brands selected from the Top 100 Global Brands of Interbrand. One hundred and ninety-two undergraduate students participated in this study. A 40 × 9 matrix in which each cell contained the average rating of a single family brand on a single property was created by averaging the 192 participants’ ratings of each of the brands for each of the nine properties. Descriptive analyses on brand ratings revealed that participants did see substantial variation among the brands. Correlational analyses indicated that six properties, except importance and interaction, were positively (i.e., duration, goals, outcomes, and similarity) and negatively (i.e., size and permeability) correlated with entitativity. Regression analyses indicated that these variables were strongly correlated with entitativity and accounted for a substantial portion of the variation of entitativity. However, the pattern of inter-correlation across properties for the brands was different from the pattern for the social groups. Hierarchical cluster analyses identified a six-cluster solution for the classification. Further, K-means cluster analyses specifying the six-cluster solution identified the brands of each cluster. Based on the characteristic patterns of the clusters in the eight properties, six types of brands were captured, including intimate, resemblance, performance, loose association, task, and conscious brands.
The results indicated that, as with social groups, properties of perceived entitativity are effective antecedents clustering brands, which may subsequently elaborate different cognitive processes (i.e., online and memory-based information processing) for brand evaluations. Brands can be effectively differentiated with perceived entitativity consisting of various patterns of brand properties. As with group perceptions, consumers’ information processing about brands should be more spontaneous (or online) for high-entitativity brands than low-entitativity brands. The discussions about brand evaluations and adverse extension effects will be more insightful whenever the perceived entitativity is considered. Research may be further conducted to verify the hypothesis.