Deconstructing the Psychological Factors behind Brand Perceptions of Bottled Japanese Green Tea in Competitive Japanese Market

Abstract

This study extends our previous research by exploring further into Japanese consumers’ perceptual model of bottled green tea beverages, examining psychological factors that affect behavioral intentions related to the four dominant brands of bottled green tea in the competitive Japanese market. We employed an extended Mehrabian-Russell Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) model to examine the factors. In our first analysis, our objective was to examine whether they are differences in how consumers evaluate individual brands. In our second analysis, we looked at whether Brand Equity or Brand Attachment could be substituted for Behavioral Intentions for the Response variable in the S-O-R model. Our findings demonstrate that the dominant brand in the green tea space is rated lowest across a number of important factors, yet maintains a commanding share of the market. In our second analysis, we show that it is possible to substitute Brand Equity and Brand Attachment for Behavioral Intentions.