A longitudinal examination of the impact of quality perception gap on brand performance in the US Automotive Industry

M. Billur Akdeniz () and Roger J. Calantone ()
Additional contact information
M. Billur Akdeniz: University of New Hampshire
Roger J. Calantone: Michigan State University

Marketing Letters, 2017, vol. 28, issue 1, No 4, 43-57

Abstract: Abstract A quality perception gap, defined as the difference between perceived and objective quality, indicates either consumers’ overappreciation or underappreciation of product or brand quality and can have critical effects on performance. The purpose of this research is to examine the impact of a quality perception gap on brand performance and its moderating role in the relationship between marketing-mix signals and performance. Analyses based on a longitudinal dataset from the US automotive industry reveal that the relationship between the quality perception gap and brand performance has an inverted U-shape. Findings also demonstrate that, except for advertising, the impact of marketing signals on performance is higher when the quality of a brand is perceived as higher than its actual quality. Finally, over an 18-year period, the average gap between perceived and objective quality demonstrates a decreasing trend, indicating that the nature of demand in the automotive industry has become more utilitarian.

Keywords: Quality perception gap; Objective quality; Perceived quality; Marketing signals; Panel data econometrics; Automotive industry (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11002-015-9392-8 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:mktlet:v:28:y:2017:i:1:d:10.1007_s11002-015-9392-8

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... etailsPage=societies

DOI: 10.1007/s11002-015-9392-8

Access Statistics for this article

Marketing Letters is currently edited by Joel Steckel and Peter Golder

More articles in Marketing Letters from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().