Antecedents and Consequences of the Gap Between Perceived and Actual Quality of Brands

Abstract

The way consumers perceive brand quality has a significant impact on performance measures such as customer satisfaction, brand loyalty, and product sales (e.g., Aaker and Jacobson; Rust et al. 1999). Prior research has addressed that perceived quality generally does not match with the actual quality of a product (Bolton and Drew 1991; Mitra and Golder 2006). The gap between perceived and actual quality is a fundamental yet scarcely addressed issue in marketing. Prior research on the quality gaps is either conceptual or based on simulations or lab experiments (Kopalle and Assuncao 2000; Kopalle and Lehmann 1995). One study examines the product quality divergence between firm and customer with cross-sectional field data (Morgan and Vorhies 2001). Another study analyzes consequences of the gap between advertised and objective quality at two different time periods (Kopalle and Lehmann 2006). Although the impact of perceived quality on consumer behavior and firm performance measures has been well established, there is little attention paid to performance impacts of a possible gap between perceived and actual quality of a brand. Despite being equally important, also little is known about the marketing factors that cause this gap. To explore these issues, we empirically examine antecedents and consequences of the gap between perceived and objective quality of a brand in the context of auto industry.