Marketing Research Models
- market segmentation modeling,
- concept testing and new product forecasting,
- advanced experimental design for conjoint and discrete choice problems,
- discrete choice modeling,
- interactive methods of examining advertising effectiveness,
- data mining methods,
- and marketing mix modeling.
- Market basket analysis
Perceived Product Quality
To understand consumer purchase behavior, it is necessary to look at consumers' perceptions of the quality and value of a product. It is also necessary to consider consumers' perceptions of what they must give up, i.e., perceived monetary and nonmonetary price.
Perceived quality is not equivalent to objective quality; it cannot be measured in terms of technical superiority or adherence to physical standards. Perceived quality is an abstract evaluation or judgment of a product that is formed from intrinsic attributes of the product (e.g., physical characteristics) and extrinsic attributes that are not part of the actual physical product (e.g., price, brand name, packaging).
Often a specific attribute will cue customers to quality. For example, ambience of open space may cue the quality to customers.
Some studies suggest that the importance of extrinsic versus intrinsic attributes in forming quality perceptions varies depending on how easy the intrinsic attribute is to evaluate at a particular point in the purchase and consumption process. Extrinsic cues and abstract dimensions that contribute to quality are less product specific and more generalizable across product categories than intrinsic cues.
Cues that signal quality to consumers may change over time due to competition, a marketer's promotional effort, changing technology, changing customer tastes, and availability of information.
Consumers seem to set a minimum standard of quality which a product must meet to be acceptable. But consumers frequently do not purchase the alternative that they perceive as having the highest quality. Considerations of price and value intervene.
A growing body of literature indicates that consumers do not always attend to, know, and remember actual prices of products; instead, they encode prices in ways that are meaningful to them (e.g., cheap versus expensive). Therefore, perceived price is not equivalent to objective price.
Costs other than price--time, effort, search, psychic-- also enter into the purchase process as sacrifices that must be made to obtain the product.
No direct relationship has been found between price and objective quality or perceived quality. It is hypothesized that product category factors, individual factors, and informational factors affect the use of price as a quality indicator.
Perceived value may be generally defined as the consumer's overall assessment of the utility of a product based on what is received and what is given. However, this definition embraces many highly personal and idiosyncratic notions of value. In addition to quality, the "get" components may include concrete product attributes as well as other high level abstractions (e.g., convenience).
In value judgments, little active weighing of benefits and costs may take place, and consumers may depend on cues to form impressions of value. Value perceptions appear to be situational and to depend on the frame of reference in which the consumer is making an evaluation.
Implications of these ideas for measurement systems include the need to account for the hierarchical nature of perceived quality and value and to find techniques to link attributes.
Ref: http://www.msi.org/publications/publication.cfm?pub=196
Comments