The influence of quality cues and typicality cues on restaurant purchase intention

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Abstract

Prior research on cue management has dominantly focused on cues consumers use to infer product quality. Only a few studies have dealt with cues that allow consumers to infer category typicality. Connecting these research streams we show how different cues affect both product quality and category typicality assessments, how these perceptions interact, and how they influence purchase intention. Results of this conjoint experiment among 113 restaurant patrons indicate that typicality cues can also serve as inferences for quality, and that cues influence purchase intentions via their effect on perceived typicality rather than on perceived quality. Once a consumer has determined the usage situation and his inherent consumption goals, he is much more inclined to search for the cues such as table setting that signal the subcategory that is expected to satisfy these goals, than finding cues such as guidebook rating that are diagnostic of product quality (only). After carefully addressing typicality cues which are instrumental in stressing points of parity, brand managers can use quality cues to show the product's points of difference in a category.

Introduction

In today's highly competitive marketplace, consumers face a bewildering array of choices in terms of both offerings and features. This proliferation increases their evaluation and selection burden (Iyengar and Lepper, 2000; Schwartz, 2000). In order to reduce this burden, consumers rely heavily upon product cues like price, patron dress, and brand name (Dick et al., 1990; Janiszewski and van Osselaer, 2005; Oxoby and Finnigan, 2007; Paulins, 2005). These cues are observable product or service characteristics that allow consumers to make inferences about unobservable attributes such as product durability or service quality. For example, when deciding upon a restaurant to select for an evening dinner with friends, a consumer may rely on such cues as patron dress or guidebook ratings to infer performance expectations of this restaurant.

The role of product or service cues in choice decisions is well recognized by consumer researchers and this phenomenon has garnered a considerable amount of attention over the past two decades. The majority of this research, however, has focused on cues that serve as signals of product quality being one of the most important product attributes (e.g., Chang and Wildt, 1996; Dick et al., 1990; Jun and Jolibert, 1983; Miyazaki et al., 2005; Moorthy and Zhao, 2000; Oxoby and Finnigan, 2007; Rust and Oliver, 1994; Steenkamp, 1990). A few other studies have investigated which cues are diagnostic in determining the extent to which a product belongs to a certain (sub)category (e.g. Nedungadi and Hutchinson, 1985; Smith et al., 1988; Viswanathan and Childers, 1999; Ward et al., 1992). In (mature) categories, consumers are likely to have well-developed cognitive schemas that include sub-classifications of the various offerings based on the degree to which they share common attributes and typical cues (Alba and Hutchinson, 1987).1

Given the relationships between these observable cues and unobservable attributes, we suggest that cues signaling category typicality may (also) inform the consumer about the usual performance on quality attributes of prototypical members of that product category. This shared nature has been largely ignored by prior research, which tends to focus on either quality or typicality in isolation from one another. Our research seeks to fill this gap by providing a joint examination of the relative influence of cues upon both quality and typicality inferences and how these inferences have an effect on purchase intention. Since typicality inferences require less cognitive processing (Lee and Olshavsky, 1994) and categories are linked to consumption goals (Huffman and Houston, 1993; Rosa and Porac, 2002), we believe that category membership information may even be preferred over product quality information in consumer decision making.

Based on a conjoint study among 113 participants in The Netherlands, our results suggest that, in mature service categories, quality cues play a secondary role to typicality cues as drivers of purchase intention. We find strong evidence that once a consumer has determined the usage situation and its inherent consumption goals, he is much more inclined to search for the cues that signal the subcategory expected to satisfy these goals, than finding cues that are diagnostic of product quality alone. We believe these findings have the potential to advance both marketing theory and practice in terms of understanding the relationship between product and service cues, and consumer choice. Most importantly, our findings suggest that instead of focusing on quality only, consumers seem more interested in the best quality offered within a specified subcategory. Since typicality cues apparently signal the points of parity with the subcategory and quality cues can be instrumental in signaling the points of differences in the subcategory, this knowledge may help managers decide which cues to stress in their product development and marketing communication efforts.

Section snippets

Conceptualization and hypotheses

Our conceptualization and hypotheses focus on the association between the quality inferences and typicality inferences that consumers draw from product or service cues, as well as the effect of these inferences upon purchase intention. As noted earlier, prior research has mainly focused on cues that provide inferences about overall product quality, or its underlying quality dimensions such as durability and responsiveness (e.g., Carman, 1990; Parasuraman et al., 1988; Paulins, 2005). The extent

Conjoint design

In order to assess the relative influence of perceived quality versus perceived typicality on purchase intention, we employed a conjoint task. Compared to traditional survey approaches that seek to determine the influence of separate product cues via self-explicated customer importance ratings (e.g., Brucks et al., 2000; Olson and Jacoby, 1972), a conjoint approach offers several important benefits, including (1) the ability to directly assess consumer trade-offs on the cue level, (2) greater

Analyses and results

As recommended by Green and Srinivasan (1978), the analysis of our conjoint scenarios began by calculating the part-worth utilities associated with each cue level for each of our 113 participants. We estimated these part worths using SPSS Conjoint 14.0 (OLS) for each measure on each cue for each subject. The difference between the lowest and highest associated part-worth values for each cue level divided by the sum of the all of the part-worth ranges served as an indicant of their relative

Discussion

In this final section, we briefly summarize our research, discuss its implications, and identify its limitations.

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