How Consumers in China Perceive Brands In Online and Offline Encounters

ABSTRACT

This article explores how a multiplatform advertising strategy enhances brand perceptions and performance in the fast-digitizing Chinese market. Using schema theory as the overarching framework, the authors posit that a company's choice of online versus offline advertising efforts significantly affects its brand perception and performance, with message content strategies, social interactivity, and reputability playing a moderating role. Results from a series of controlled experiments and a real-life brand database confirm that online and offline advertising efforts influenced brand warmth and competence, respectively, and these effects were enhanced by appropriate message content. Brand warmth and competence individually and complementarily affected purchase intentions.