For Research : Perceived Products Quality

Olson (1978) stated that consumers use quality to develop the product characteristics and inferential beliefs and their actual product choice can be a direct function of these media beliefs. Chéron and Propeck (1997) had examined and compared the dimensions used to measure the perceived quality of product of consumers conducted by different researchers for over two decades (see Table 2-6). Then, they suggested to use the latent variables and associated indicators to obtain a reliable and valid measure of the perceived quality of products as shown in Table 2-7. Quality has been accepted as a great attention from the consumer perspective towards the product from various countries. Some researchers including Reierson (1966), Gaedeke (1973), White (1979), and Belk (1993) revealed that quality is treated as a uni-dimensional index patterned while the other recognized it as multi-dimension. As we knew, Scott, Thomas, and John (1997) treated quality as a multi-dimension and attributed five dimensions including reliability, value for money, appearance, availability, and functional for quality. Chinen, Jun, and Hampton (2000) studied on the investigation of US consumer attitude towards domestic products versus foreign products. Eight scale items—quality, workmanship, overall products, reliable, after service, value for the money, attractive appearance, and innovative—were employed to measure the construct of product quality.

Chao (2001) revealed that the meaning of perceived quality is perceived designed quality, which a consumer evaluates quality of product through the excellent or superiority of a conceptual idea and subsequent designed engineering, and perceived manufactured quality is referred to a consumer’s judgment of product’s materials, parts, and/or assembly. Based on Chao (1993) and Insch and McBride (1998), perceived product quality may be decomposed into two dimensions—designed quality and manufactured quality. Ahmed, et al. (1994) revealed that country of design and country of assembly significant impact on perceived quality and purchase value.