以產品延伸觀點探討不同品牌概念對消費者使用汽車共享意願的影響

Abstract

近年來，歐美國家逐漸興起汽車共享 (Carsharing) 的車輛使用方式，讓使用者得以在任何想用車的時間，短時間的取得車輛的使用權，許多汽車業者紛紛推出汽車共享的服務，如Benz、BMW、Ford、Volkswagen等，藉由產品延伸的方式，利用已建立的品牌名稱，推出僅能取得使用權且較便宜的汽車使用方式。而以往有關產品延伸的研究均強調知覺契合度 (Fit) 的重要，當延伸產品與該品牌概念的一致性越高，知覺契合度越高，消費者對於該產品及品牌的評價則會越高。汽車共享與傳統汽車使用方式最大的不同在於所有權移轉與否，因此本研究除探討品牌概念的影響外，也加入品牌使用者與否作為調節因子，以了解受測者對於汽車共享的評價是否會受以上因子所影響，進而影響其使用意願。本研究以情境設計的方式進行資料收集，設計2 (品牌概念：尊貴導向、功能導向) × 2 (品牌使用者與否) 種情境，於台北市區共收集186份樣本，結果顯示，尊貴導向品牌概念的品牌使用者對於汽車共享的評價低於非品牌使用者，推測其原因為該品牌使用者追求與眾不同的獨特感，而汽車共享會降低這種感覺；而無論功能導向品牌概念的品牌使用者與否，其對於汽車共享的評價無顯著差異，因功能導向品牌概念的品牌使用者並無想要和特定族群產生連結的動機，且汽車共享和功能導向品牌概念的一致性較高，因此整體評價也較尊貴導向品牌概念高，且研究結果也指出對汽車共享的評價會正向影響其使用意願。因此，根據研究結果，整體來說消費者對於功能導向品牌所推出的汽車共享評價較高，使用意願也較高，其較適合提供汽車共享的服務，而若尊貴導向品牌愈推出汽車共享時，則可藉由創立子品牌的方式，提升該品牌使用者對汽車共享的評價。

Recently, carsharing becomes popular in western countries. It lets users drive shared cars whenever they want and the fee of carsharing can be charged in minutes or hours. There are many motor corporations provide this new service, such as Mercedes, BMW, Ford, Volkswagen and so on. By product line extensions, these companies use the existed brands to provide new services that the users can only buy the right of using cars but they don’t have the ownership of the cars. Prior researches focus on the importance of fit between the new products and the brands. When the new products are consistent with the brand concept, the fit will become higher, and customers’ evaluation will become better. The biggest difference between carsharing and traditional car use is that in carsharing you can only buy the right of using the car but not the ownership. So, in addition to brand concept, this research also use “brand user” as the moderator to discuss customers’ evaluation and intention to use carsharing. The results show that in prestige-oriented brand concept and brand user situation, the evaluations are lower than those who are not brand users; and in functional-oriented brand concept, the evaluations are no difference no matter they are brand users or not. The results also show that customers’ evaluation can effectively predict customers’ intention of using carsharing. According to the results, functional-oriented brand concept’s overall evaluation of carsharing is higher than prestige-oriented, which indicates that the functional-oriented brands are more appropriate to provide carsharing services, and it will be better for prestige-oriented brands introducing sub-brands to provide carsharing in order to avoid the negative evaluations from brand users.