A Comparative Study of Chinese and Foreign Narrative Commercials’ Brand Image Building: A Cognitive Poetics Approach

Abstract

The creation of a potential intellectual, psychological or emotional connection with the customers through revealing the hard and soft attributes of a brand is the general mechanism in brand image building of both Chinese and foreign narrative commercials. But the distinction of Chinese and foreign narrative commercials’ brand image building mainly lies in the aspects like thinking mode, gender preference and parental love for children, which result in different ways of creating the image of Maker, Product and User through Possible World, Figure-Ground and Prototype to create both the hard and soft attributes of a brand. This paper provides an analytical mode for intercultural study of commercials’ brand image building by combining the theories of cognitive poetics with Alexander Biel’s Brand Image Building model so as to broaden the perspective of business discourse analysis.

Keywords

Brand image / narrative commercials / cognitive poetics / hard attribute / soft attribute

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