The Effects of Service Brand Communication on Consumer Brand Attitudes: An Empirical Research Based on China's Insurance Brand

As an emerging research issue, service brand communication is lack of sufficient research, especially about its effect on consumers' psychology. This study divides service brand communication into employee-involved and non-employee-involved brand-to-customer communication, and identifies their effects on consumers' cognitive attitude, affective attitude, and behavioral intention based on China's insurance brand. The findings indicated that two approaches of communication have significant positive effects on cognitive and affective brand attitude and, in addition, influence consumers' behavioral intention. Interestingly, employee-involved communication is important for cognitive and affective brand attitude equally; on the other hand, non-employee-involved communication has relatively stronger influence on cognitive attitude. Besides, affective attitude has a significant direct effect on behavioral intention, whereas cognitive attitude affects behavioral intention indirectly through affective attitude.