The Impact of Inferential Beliefs on Product Evaluations

Huber, Joel; McCann, John M.

doi:10.2307/3151566

Cited by 284 publications

(108 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…The interactive model requires no such assumption. Second, an additive integration rule as was found for low to moderately high prices is consistent with previous research on price-quality tradeoffs (Hagerty 1978, Yamagishi and Hill 1981, Huber and McCann 1982. additive way for low to moderately high price levels.…”

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confidence: 76%

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Product Quality: An Investigation into the Concept and How It Is Perceived by Consumers

Sujan¹,

Steenkamp²

1991

Journal of Marketing

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Conclusions 236Part IV Summary and Conclusions 239 Summary and Conclusions 241References 251 Subject index 272Samenvatting 274Curriculum Vitae 281 XI INTRODUCTIONThe issue of product quality has come to the forefront in Europe and the United States. The strategic importance of product quality is acknowledged at the macro level as well as at the micro level in Western societies. At the macro level, product quality has been identified as a key variable in determining 'national' competitiveness (i.e., competitiveness of a nation as a whole, as distinct from the competitiveness of individual firms). To mention a few examples, Naisbitt (1982) in his book Megatrends attributes the decline of American competitiveness to high quality of foreign products and the relative lack of emphasis on quality by U.S. firms and managers. Naisbitt's opinion is shared by scholars such as Leonard and Sasser (1982), Garvin (1983Garvin ( ,1984b, and Takeuchi and Quelch (1983), and by many business people and politicians (Harvard Business Review 1987). Kennedy (1987) in his bookThe Rise and Fall of the Great Powers identifies the strong commitment to quality as one of the major causes of the 'Japanese miracle'. He predicts that the economic power of Japan will increase further in the next decades, and expects that high product quality will continue to be a major underlying cause of this trend. The competitive strength of the Federal Republic of Germany has also been traced to the quality of its products (Limprecht and Hayes 1982). A recent report of the Dutch Scientific Council on Government Policy has identified product quality as a key factor determining future growth in Dutch exports and GNP (WRR 1987). National quality programs have been developed in such countries as the USA, Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden, United Kingdom, and France. At the micro level, product quality has been identified as an important variable for consumers as well as producers. It has been argued that the search for quality is the most important consumer trend of the 1980s (Rabin 1983). Consumers are now demanding higher quality than ever before , and are willing to pay more for better products (Sloan et al. 1984, Folkers 1986, Steenkamp and Van Trijp 1989a).In line with the importance consumers attach to product quality, managers today accord quality its place on the list of paramount strategic issues. In many markets, quality competition has supplanted price competition. Regardless of type of industry, size of the company, and type of manufacturing process, quality has become an essential element of competitive strategy (Wolff 1986).Companies are increasingly making adjustments in product designs, manufacturing processes, and marketing strategies to improve product quality. Frequently, improving quality may even determine whether a company survives in the marketplace. Porter (1980) posits that superior quality is an effective product differentiation strategy to create customer loyalty, to lower price elasticity, and to present 1 barriers to competition. Pe...

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confidence: 76%

“…Huber and McCann (1982) . Thus, subjects sometimes impute a value to a missing factor by assigning it a constant negative value that is independent of the observable information.…”

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confidence: 99%

Product Quality: An Investigation into the Concept and How It Is Perceived by Consumers

Sujan¹,

Steenkamp²

1991

Journal of Marketing

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“…Alternatively, others have argued that individuals sometimes treat missing information as if it were negative (Huber & McCann, 1982;Jaccard & Wood, 1988;Johnson, 1987Johnson, , 1989Lim & Kim, 1992;Lim, Olshavsky, & Kim, 1988;Meyer, 1981;Yamagishi & Hill, 1981, 1983Yates, Jagacinski, & Faber, 1978). Presumably, the assumption is that missing information has been withheld because it would lead to a negative evaluation.…”

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confidence: 99%

Adaptive Mechanisms for Treating Missing Information: A Simulation Study

García‐Retamero

Rieskamp

2008

Psychol Rec

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People often make inferences with incomplete information. Previous research has led to a mixed picture of how people treat missing information. To explain these results, the authors follow the Brunswikian perspective on human inference and hypothesize that the mechanism's accuracy for treating missing information depends on how it is distributed in a certain environment. The hypoth-esis is supported by the results of a simulation study, which also shows that the mechanism for treating missing information has a much stronger impact on overall accuracy than the most accurate inference strategies considered. The conclusion is that how people react to missing information could be an adaptive response to specific environments.When making inferences, people are often confronted with incomplete information. Looking for a healthy meal at a restaurant, for instance, we often do not have much detail about the entrées on the menu (e.g., the amount of cholesterol, fat, or preservatives in the dishes, or the cooking methods used) to help us infer which dish would be the wisest choice. Nevertheless, even with incomplete information, people infer which is the healthier option and make their choices. In the present article, the question addressed is how people should make inferences despite incomplete information.The question of how people deal with incomplete information has attracted increasing interest (see Ganzach

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“…Also, Baker (1998) and Bitner's (1992) conceptualizations of how service environment can influence consumer decision making. These are based on: Inference Theory (Huber and McCann 1982), Schema Theory (Fiske 1982), Theory of affordances (Gibson 1979). Also Adaptation theory (Helson 1964) The link between store environmental elements, emotions (psychic cost perceptions), and patronage Store design cues have a greater and more ubiquitous affect on buyer perceptions of the various retail store choice criteria than do employee and store music cues.…”

Section: Affectmentioning

confidence: 99%