The Empirical Research Of The Relationship Between Product Perceived Quality And Relationship Quality

Compared with the industrial age, the market pattern in the 21st century has fundamentally changed from the seller's market to a buyer's one. Costumer's choosing products even their producers has become an inevitable trend. The new characteristics of market competition featured by the ever-increasing competition among enterprises and the diverse realization have made more and more enterprises aware that the establishment, maintenance and development of long-time friendship and cooperation with customers to secure the availability of customers of scarcity vale is an inevitable choice for the survival and development of themselves. In addition, people's consumption concept is becoming external, individual and diverse, leading to higher and higher proportion of spiritual and mental consumption. That objectively requires enterprises and customers to fulfill their respective demands and benefits through frequent contact. The changes in market competition and consumption concept will definitely result in the changes in marketing paradigm. The traditional product-oriented marketing must be replaced by the customer-centered marketing of long-time mutually beneficial cooperation in an active manner. The enterprises must improve relationship quality through a myriad of ways in order to maintain a long-time relationship with customers, because relationship quality is the core issue of relationship marketing. Quality is an important objective index concerning the performance of the products. But to feel and experience the quality has been of more importance for the enterprise's marketing activities. The perceived quality of product and service constitutes the basis of quality and plays an important role in the long-time relationship between the enterprise and customer.Foreign scholars have carried out lots of research on relationship quality, however, they have not reached a consensus on the definition and dimension of relationship quality, making it more difficult for the follow-up research. This paper adopts the three-dimensional structure of satisfaction, trust and commitment, the well recognized structure in China, in hope of testing its applicability in China through empirical research. The research on the relationship between the perceived quality and quality relationship must be carried out by understanding the mechanism of the influence of each dimension on quality relationship. Proceeding from the definition of product as a whole and basing on the research outcomes on product perceived quality by other scholars in the past, this paper fixes the product quality, service and brand image as dimensions of perceived quality, and present an empirical analysis on the appropriateness of the dimension setting of product perceived quality through the example of mobile phone industry. Besides, the paper also brings to light the relationship between product perceived quality and relationship quality by revealing the mechanism of influence of the product quality, service and brand image on satisfaction, trust and commitment.Most of the items involved in the questionnaire of this research were translated into Chinese from the achievements of foreign scholars in this regard. The sample survey began right after the ultimate questionnaire was fixed. Some of the questionnaires were released through random interview in the campus of Jilin University. The rest of data was collected on the Internet. The questionnaires were collected and studied for the descriptive analysis on samples and variables, and the reliability and validity analysis by the statistics software SPSS13.0, as well as for the tests on hypothetical model by AMOS7.0. On the basis of the hypothetical tests, the main conclusion can be drawn as follows: the quality of product has a remarkable and positive effect on customer's satisfaction, trust and commitment. The service of product also has a notable effect on customer's satisfaction, trust and commitment. The brand image has an obvious and positive effect on satisfaction and trust, but not an obvious effect on commitment. The consumption concept of customers is becoming more and more rational during the market's evolution to maturity. Customers will not make a commitment to an enterprise easily only for public appraisal or fame of a brand because they usually have to safeguard their own rights and interests by themselves for the imperfection of the rules and regulations aiming at protecting the rights and interests of customers in China.In face of the fierce market competition, the Chinese enterprises have to realize that the focus of competition has shifted from the product itself to the establishment of a long-time and mutually beneficial relationship with customers. This relationship is not easily imitated by rivalries so it has become a differentiated and sustainable advantage in competition. To obtain the customers of scarcity value, enterprises must win trust of customers by providing them with satisfactory product constantly, thus promoting customers to make their commitments. The product referred is not a pure and realistic subject; instead, it is an integrated concept containing materiality, service and symbolism. For customers, the contact with enterprises is for meeting their demands of getting products, so high-quality products constitute the basis of the initial relationship between customers and enterprises, which bears a direct influence on customers'satisfaction. If enterprises cannot provide their customers with products of superior quality to their rivalries, or at least the products of the same quality, customers will not have a satisfying appraisal and the initial phase of the enterprise-customer relationship fails. As the qualities of products of different producers are becoming more and more alike, product service has become the focus of competition. Providing product service enables employees to have a face-to-face contact with customers. The skilled communication and effective resolution to customers'questions will improve customers'trust in enterprises. Based on the current situation, product service has lagged far behind the development of product itself. Many questions occur, particularly in after-sale service sector, resulting in a low appraisal on after-sale service from customers. It demands that the enterprises should double their efforts in product service sector by providing them with thoughtful and delicate service to increase the added value of their products in order to consolidate the enterprise-customer relationship. As an important, intangible asset of enterprise, brand can provide more value and benefits to customers mentally compared with tangible assets. An excellent brand image can reduce the risk perception of customers and enhance their preference, even make them pay higher prices for the products. The Chinese started late in recognizing and utilizing brand, and there are still many problems and misunderstandings on brand of enterprise. We should be keenly aware that the establishment of a brand image doesn't only depend on advertising, but on the brand-customer relationship as well as the core value it can provide to its customers.