Abstract: Consumers are deeply influenced by the brand images of the specialized markets they are staying when selecting the embedded brand of one certain enterprise. By applying the category reasoning theory (CT) and the Accessibility-Diagnosticity Framework (ADF), this paper studies the influence of inherent mechanism and route of specialized market brand on the embedded brands. And by constructing the corresponding structure equation model, it conducts an empirical test with the market research data about the “China commodity city” in Yiwu. The results show that the specialized market brands are influencing the embedded brands through the two routes, i.e. consumers’ “faith to brand essence attribute” and “brand trust”. During the course of this kind of influence, the “typicality of the embedded brands” and the “familiarity of customers to the embedded brands” are playing a significant regulatory role.

Key words: specialized market brand; embedded brand; category reasoning; structure equation (SEM)