Does8/10Equal80/100? The Effect Of Scale Range On Perceived Numerical Evaluation

In practical marketing environment, much information is quoted in number.Besides the price, the performance of product and the satisfaction of service are oftenexpressed in numbers. For example, the product sold online or the released moviealways comes along with general review scores. Amazon and360Buy provide a fullscore of5stars. Meanwhile, Douban and Mtime use a full score of10points. Willevaluations based on these scores be affected by the size of full marks? This researchwill explore the influence of scale range on the evaluation of a singular product orservice when the performance of the product or service is expressed in numbers.Based on the theory of numerosity heuristic, people tend to neglect the unit ofnumber, making the judgment only according to the number per se. Therefore, with thescale describing the performance score of a product expanding, the performance scoreseems bigger, meanwhile, the gap between the performance score and the full markseems bigger as well. As a result, when the consumers focus on the performance scoreper se, higher evaluation will be perceived, while when the gap is highlighted, perceivedevaluation will be lower. Because of the precondition that most of the performance ofthe product and the evaluation of service are above the pass mark, consumers are morelikely to consider the gap between the score and the full mark. Hence, the authorproposes that as the scale range expressing the performance of a product or serviceexpands, the negative perception of the product or service will be enlarged, resulting inthe decrease of perceived evaluation. Furthermore, the author proposes two moderators:those are need for cognition and regulatory focus. Need for cognition moderates thestrength of the scale range effect, that is, the scale range effect works under high needfor cognition. Regulatory focus moderates the direction of the scale range effect.Particularly, under prevention focus, larger scale range generates lower perceivedevaluation; while under promotion focus, larger scale range encourages higherperceived evaluation.Six experiments provide support for the four hypotheses by comparing thedifference of perceived evaluations between the performance scores out of100and out of10. The scores are selected on the level of70%,80%and90%of the full mark. Theresults show that, the perceived evaluation is lower when the performance score isdescribed as80out of100or70out of100than8out of10or7out of10. This effectdoes not work on the score of90%of the full mark. Negative perception mediates thenegative influence of larger scale on perceived evaluation. Further, the moderating rolesof need for cognition and regulatory focus are supported. Implications, limitations andfurther research are discussed at the end.