Research Towards The Effect Of External Cues On Customer Perceived Service Quality And Purchase Intention

In the market,the capability of consumer's awareness,the time and ability of searching for information are limited,and consumers do not have complete information about products .Therefore,it is difficult for consumers to make objective judgment of product. Facing a variety of products whose function and quality are uncertain,consumers will select some insightful cues as the standards to evaluate product quality. This is the cue utilization theory,which study how consumers evaluate product quality by particular cues on the position of consumers.After collecting and reading the literature,the author finds there is no studies of service quality based on cues utilization theory,and this paper can make up for the research gap. The conclusions can help understand the cues used in the process of evaluating service quality and the weight of these cues in the minds of consumers. Finally,this paper proposes some market recommendations to improve perceived service quality for service provider.There are six chapters in the paper:chapter one,introduction. It mainly includes research background,significance of the topic and research content. Chapter two,literature review. This part mainly sort and review the literature about the service quality, purchase intention and clues theory. Chapter three,research models and hypothesis. This chapter gives research model and hypotheses. Chapter four,research design. It mainly includes research object selection, research sample selection, data collection methods, scale design and pre-survey data analysis. Chapter five,data analysis. There are description of the sample distribution,reliability and validity analysis,correlation analysis,intermediation analysis and regression analysis. Chapter six, conclusions and research prospects. This section includes research findings, marketing proposals, the limitations and future research directions.This paper will collect data by questionnaire,analyze the data by the software of SPSS and AMOS and test hypothesis by the way of regression analysis.Based on the cue utilization theory,this paper study how price,brand image,reference group,personnel appearance and behavior affect the perceived quality and purchase intention with the telecommunication industry as the research object and university students as the samples. Through research we draw the following conclusions: first, consumers will evaluate the quality of service through external cues, for example, the most important cues that consumers rely heavily on are the brand image and personnel appearance and behavior for telecommunications industry; second, there is a significant positive correlation between perceived quality and consumer purchase intention; Third, the external cues affect purchase intentions through perceived quality, that is, perceived quality act as an intermediary variable.Based on the conclusion of the study,author proposes the following marketing suggestion:Firstly,strengthening brand awareness and improving service level,because these are the two most important external cues which customers rely on. Secondly segmenting the market by external cues,then take appropriate marketing measures on the different segmenting market.