iBusiness, 2013, 5, 162-167
http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/ib.2013.53B035 Published Online September 2013 (http://www.scirp.org/journal/ib)
Corporate Image Cognition Influence Perceived Quality
and Purchase Intention Empirical Research
Jing Li1, Jiang Li2, Yongbiao Zheng2
1Economics and Management School, Tianjin University of Technology and Education, Tianjin, China; 2Economics and Manage-
ment School, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing, China.
Received 2013
ABSTRACT
Based on the theory of corporate image and perceived quality, we researched influence of consumers corporate image
cognition on consumers perceived quality and purchase intention. We take the telecoms operator as practical example to
do questionnaire survey and analyze the data with SPSS16.0 and structural equation model; the research results show
that consumers’ corporate image cognition directly and prominently affects perceived quality instead of consumer pur-
chase intention; It also shows that in china marketing environment, the social image of corporate image has the greatest
effect on consumer perceived quality, followed by staff image and marketing image.
Keywords: Corporate Image Cognition; Perceived Quality; Purchase Intention
1. Introduction
As the development of market economy and technology,
the products of different enterprises have tiny difference
at the physical attribute level, Consumers in purchasing
behavior not only rely on the product price, function,
quality and other traditional parameters to choose the
consuming goods, When and where and in which way
the products are produced, and the enterprise image and
other factors have become the influencing factors of the
customers' purchasing behavior. Enterprise began to pay
more and more attention to build the enterprise image,
through setting up the good enterprise image to influence
consumers to its product evaluation to have identity atti-
tude, which can eventually lead to the product of the en-
terprise's preferences and enhance purchase intention,
and eventually to take the purchasing behavior.
The current literatures have less research for enterprise
image on consumer product service quality perception
influence, therefore, through the questionnaire survey we
get a data and use structure equation model to analyze
influence of enterprise image on perceived quality and
purchase intention, which has provided guidance for en-
terprise marketing management.
2. Literature Review
2.1. Definition and Formation of Corporate
Image
The Different scholars have different point of view for
the definition of enterprise image. Nicolas indo（1992）
consider that Enterprise image is combined of all aspects
of the enterprise customers view, and it is determined by
stimulation provided by the enterprise, the individual
cognitive style and circumstance under which cognition
has function. Bai Yongxiu(2001) hold the view that En-
terprise image is a general impression a enterprise or a
community remains in the public mind; it is the compre-
hensive reflection of behavior abilities of behavior sub-
ject. Based on association network memory model,
KELLER (1993) puts forward enterprise image is the
perception of consumer in memory of the cognitive
through association with the brand. Kotler (1991) puts
forward enterprise image is a group of perception, faith
and idea held by one person to an enterprise.
Enterprise activities and its complexity have led cog-
nitive elements of consumers for corporate image are
very complex. Kato bond macro (1989) found that enter-
prise image including technology image, market image,
future-oriented image, company atmosphere image, and
operator image. Based on the correlation network mem-
ory model Brown&Dacin (1997) divided consumer asso-
ciation into company ability association and the company
society responsibility association. LeBlance, Gaston,
Nguyen Nha (1996) found that the service enterprise
image is formed by enterprise identity characteristics,
enterprise reputation, service environment, service level
and the service contact. Fombrun (2000) put forward
enterprise image is formed by emotional appeal cognitive,

Corporate Image Cognition Influence Perceived Quality and Purchase Intention Empirical Research 163
product and service, vision and leadership, working en-
vironment, social and environmental responsibility, fi-
nancial performance; he also designed 20 measuring
project. This paper is based on the research of Fombrun’s
classification.
2.2. Conception of Perceived Quality
Quality research focuses on two aspects: one is based on
the product or manufacturer's objective quality research,
such as total quality management (TQM), according to
external and internal properties of product including du-
rability, safety, design, appearance and other predefined
idealized technology standards enterprise and product
quality experts take objective and impartial evaluation
(Rieszm,1978; Zeithaml, 1988), on the other hand, based
on consumer perception of quality research, some schol-
ars put forward owing to information asymmetry con-
sumers can't get and understand all technical index of
quality evaluation, but according to relevant information
they always can draw their own conclusions to judge the
quality of the products, good or bad. It is the general ab-
stract conclusion that determines the customer’s choice
of the products. In the evaluation of the quality of your
product or service, consumers rarely adopt the objective
quality of the products, but they always adopt the quality
of the consumers perceive to judge the quality of your
product or service (Gokdrick, 1984), Zeitham (1988)
thinks that perceived quality is the overall superiority or
remarkable judgment of consumer to the products. Based
on cue utilization theory, Kirmani (2000)put forward
perceived quality is all the advantages of evaluation of
the brand consumers use internal and external clues. In
the definition of perceived quality, Mitra and Golder
(2006) introduced the conception of quality expected,
that perceived quality comes from consumer oneself or
others experience related to enterprise, marketing infor-
mation, its form is not dependent on the use or inspection
of the product.
3. Study Method and Data Colleting
3.1. Propose Research Hypothesis
According to the cue utilization theory, the cognition of
enterprise image of consumer is one of important clues
that influent consumer to judge the quality of service,
especially when consumer faces new products, important
information will be missing, consumers makes judgment
in the available clues and lack product attributes. In the
market at any time consumers will link company and
products together; this is why many companies apply
brand strategy. when people's product evaluation happens
in situation full of company information, the company
association will become the key framework of evaluation
about the product (WangHaiZhong, 2006), Huang
Heshui (2009) points out that with the real estate disputes
increase, when buying a house consumers will take real
estate developer into account, on the one hand, they try
to find out the credit of the real estate developer, on the
other hand they want to know company scale of real es-
tate developer. Foreign scholars study the effects of all
kinds of company association on consumer reflection,
but the study conclusion are ambiguous, a study showed
that the company image has positive influence on con-
sumer product evaluation and performance (Belch, 1987;
Carlson, 1963), but Hardy (1970) found that the negative
relationship between company image and product pref-
erence, Shimp&Bearden (1982) found the company im-
age did not have a strong influence on consumer reac-
tion.
So we propose the following research hypothesis:
H1：Corporate image cognition has effect on consumer
perceived quality
H2: consumer perceived quality has effect on con-
sumer purchase intention
In the competitive global market, consumers begin
caring about information about the company behind the
product and brand (Philip J. The Kitchen, Andrew Laur-
ence, 2003), good enterprise image can attract more
consumers and increase confidence of customer for
products and services, advertising content and purchase
decisions (Fombrun, 1998; Lafferty&Goldsmith, 1999),
so we put forward:
H3: Corporate image cognition has effect on consumer
purchase intention
3.2. Variable Determination
This research mainly involves three variables: enterprise
image cognition, perceived quality and purchase inten-
tion. referring to the enterprise image measurement index
and scale of Dodds (1991); Fombrun (2001); Cohen
(1963); Manfred (2004) this study measured enterprise
image cognition from the customer orientation, market
performance, staff image, social responsibility, the de-
velopment foreground, emotional appeal six aspects,
designing a total of 16-item to measure it. We measured
perceived quality from the overall evaluation, reliability,
advanced three aspects of three questions. Integrating the
measurement of purchase intention of Michael (1982),
Dodds (1991), we measured purchase intention from
three specific measurement items. All of the question-
naires use likerts' level 5 scale, from "much don't agree"
to "much agreed to" give 1 ~ 5 points score to measure.
3.3. Data Collecting
We chose the telecom enterprise brand and 3G service as
the research object, at first we have a small scale research

Corporate Image Cognition Influence Perceived Quality and Purchase Intention Empirical Research
164
(N = 50), and on the basis that we give necessary refining
word modifying of our questionnaire to enhance the test
ability of questionnaire. In formal investigation we give
out 250 questionnaire with valid questionnaires for 236
copies, effective recovery rate is 94.4%. telecom enter-
prise brand distribution for China Telecom, China Mo-
bile, China Unicom =1：1：1, male accounted for, 61.9%,
female accounted for 38.1%. From profession distribu-
tion: students 44.78%, working people accounted for
55.22%. From the age distribution : <20 years old 8.2%,
20 to 30 years old (79.1%), 31 to 40 to 10.4%, 41 to 50
accounting for 2.2%. Revenue: personal income< 1000
yuan accounted for 31.3%, and from 1000 to 2000
(20.1%), and 2000 to 3000 (18.7%), and 3000-4000
(4.5%), and 4000 to 5000 0.7%, more than 5000 18.7%.
3.4. Data Analysis
1) Analysis of reliability and effectiveness of the scale
Through the Cronbach's a coefficient and Item-to-To-
tal related coefficient we test internal consistency and
reliability of the scale. The preliminary reliability analy-
sis showed that some components’ Cronbach 's a coeffi-
cient is below 0.7 which is the critical value Nunnnally
and Bernstein (1994) recommended, Item-to-Total cor-
relation coefficient tests showed the subject further cuts
can be measured in order to improve the Cronbach' s a
coefficient values. So we have exploratory factor analy-
sis on measurement items of enterprise image and per-
ceived quality, the results in Table 1. KMO statistics is
0.912, Bartlett 's Test results are also significant, which
suggests that it is meaningful to analyze the main com-
ponent of the factor of enterprise image. Using SPSS16.0,
take varimax orthogonal rotation method to carry on
the factor rotating, and extracted features more than 1 of
3 root male factor, a total of 77.761% of the total vari-
ance explained. Factor analysis results see Table 1.
From Table 1 we can see the 16-item can be summed
up in three main factors, according to the size of the
loading of factor to name the three factors of. F1 c12-on
the c17 loading are above 0.6, F2 in c6 -c9 the loading
above 0.8, factor F3 in c2, c4, c10 c11 the loading are
close to or greater than 0.7, we can observe that c2 and
c4 factor loading are not outstanding, therefore, we de-
lete the c3 and c5-item. Combined with the meaning of
each-item, we define the six involved in the variables
hypothesis again, shrinking the scope of the market per-
formance of the enterprise , eliminating the factor of en-
terprise research and development ability; Enterprise
staff cognition image meaning has been widened; Tele-
communication enterprise as a service type of enterprise,
the quality of the service employees and concern for the
customer will directly affect the development of the en-
terprise, so we have put the service of the personnel and
focus on customer's complaint down to enterprise staff
image cognition, that is we divide the enterprise image
cognition into three dimensions: enterprise market per-
formance image cognition, corporate social image cogni-
tion, the image of the enterprise staff cognition. After
deleting the item Cronbach’s a coefficient value range
0.88 to 0.9263, higher than the critical value of 0.7.
Therefore, this research scale has good internal reliabil-
ity.
Table 2 results indicate that comparing the three
groups model, chi-square values exist significant differ-
ences, showing that limited model and not limited model
are significantly different, so we can think that staff im-
age and market image, staff image and social image,
market image and social image of the difference between
the two dimensions of the scale effect degree is high. In
aggregate, enterprise image scale difference validity is
high.
Table 1. Rotated component matrixa.
Component
item
1 2 3
c1 0.167 0.409 0.695
c2 0.470 0.323 0.569
c3 0.256 0.234 0.811
c4 0.585 0.370 0.284
c5 0.263 0.831 0.195
c6 0.119 0.911 0.198
c7 0.149 0.852 0.249
c8 0.182 0.835 0.272
c9 0.403 0.199 0.735
c10 0.364 0.166 0.783
c11 0.842 0.146 0.211
c12 0.832 0.035 0.326
c13 0.869 0.053 0.250
c14 0.737 0.261 0.340
c15 0.774 0.252 0.278
c16 0.652 0.481 0.109
Table 2. Discriminant validity of scale.
Model DFCMINP NFI
Delta-1
IFI
Delta-2
RFI
rho-1
TLI
rho2
Limited
model1 1184.2290.0000.224 0.230 0.281 0.290
Limited
model2 1130.5230.0000.122 0.122 0.126 0.150
Limited
model3 1357.2830.0000.298 0.308 0.358 0.372

Corporate Image Cognition Influence Perceived Quality and Purchase Intention Empirical Research
165
2) Hypothesis testing When creating variables relationship between staff
image, market image, social responsibility image and
purchase intention, model fitting degree didn't pass.
When removing these relations, model fitting degree
effect is good, indicating the assumption that enterprise
image directly has positive influence on purchase inten-
tion is not correct. Table 4 lists the original hypothesis of
model, standardization path coefficient, C.R. value and
hypothesis testing results. In enterprise image dimensions
social image has the biggest impact on the perceived
quality, influence coefficient is 0.65, followed by staff
image, influence coefficient was 0.36, and finally for
market image 0.04.
We put the survey data in Figure 1 model, using co-
variance modeling (AMOS method) to analyze integra-
tion model structure. We can judge that whole fitting
degree of the model is better, see Table 3.
In fitting process, applying maximum likelihood esti-
mation methods of its parameter estimation form path
graph, from Figure 1 software analysis path can see the
following information: the relationship between potential
variables and the observed variables, the relationship
between the latent variables and the latent variables,
model path index, Index error term, index of factor in the
loading results.
Figure 1. Stucture mode l.
Table 3. Model evaluation index.
Absolute fitting index Relative fitting index Brief fitting index
FI
X2/df GFI RMSEANFI IFI CFI PNFI PCFI
reference <2 >0.90 <0.06 >0.90 >0.90 >0.90 >0.50 >0.50
Supposing model 1.444 0.900 0.058 0.939 0.980 0.980 0.621 0.649
Table 4. Standard path and hypothesis result.
hypothesis Standard path C.R. Hypothesis if pass
H1a:staff I Image→perceived quality 0.36 5.427 Y
H1b:market image→perceived quality 0.04 4.824 Y
H1c:social image→perceived quality 0.65 10.592 Y
H2:perceived quality ->purchase intention 0.59 8.385 Y

Corporate Image Cognition Influence Perceived Quality and Purchase Intention Empirical Research
166
4. Conclusions
The purpose of this study is to research the relationship
between enterprise image cognition and consumers per-
ceived quality, our research results confirm our hypothe-
sis, (1) consumer enterprise image cognition influence
the perceived quality and then further influence con-
sumer purchase intention, (2) of the three dimensions of
enterprise image cognition, social responsibility image
has the greatest effect on consumer perceived quality,
followed by staff image, and finally market performance.
This study is different from that of the western scholars,
western scholars study found that (Brown&Dacin, 1997,
1994; KELLER&Aaker Winters, 1998) enterprise social
responsibility has little effect on product attributes per-
ceptions, and companies ability cognition has a bigger
impact on consumer products evaluation and have great
effect on product quality cognition (3) perceived quality
is a significant factor that influence customers' purchas-
ing behavior.
Perceived quality is the important influencing factor of
the consumer purchase intention. The enterprise can in-
fluence the perceived quality by improving the enterprise
image. That whether an enterprise is worth trusting and
has a sense of responsibility are also important factors
influencing the perceived quality of the Chinese con-
sumer. In China's cultural environment the consumer will
not trust product or service of a brand if there is not a
good enterprise as a support. As Chinese market envi-
ronment and the company's regulatory system also need
to be further perfected, all sorts of domestic enterprise
crisis has made consumers not trust the brand enterprise
as before, Chinese consumers will not obsessed with en-
terprise market performance and enterprise ability; an
enterprise market performance is good, its product must
be high quality as the only standard to judge; consumers
pay more and more attention to the social responsibility
of the enterprise image behind product. That whether the
enterprise is honest and credible and whether has a real
concern of consumer demand and participation in public
welfare undertakings to reward the society plays a more
and more important role in consumer judging the product
quality. Managers can show that they are social concern
and willing to social responsibility through charity, de-
veloping pollution-free product and providing equal em-
ployment opportunities. To the public, enterprise of
wider social care may affect their judgment and evalua-
tion of the enterprise.
This study only selected the telecom service providers
3 G service brand, and in real life different industry
products are different, its consumer perception is differ-
ent, and so the promoting significance of conclusion fell.
Further research should be expanded to the selection of
the industry, covering more categories of products, such
as clothing, fast consuming goods and other brands of
product category.
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