Effects Of Website Information Context On Consumers’ Perceived Quality

With highly development in Internet technology, the information presented on shopping website is more and more diversely. Faced with such situation, how do consumers utilize these cues to assess product is the core proposition what researchers concerned. In recent years,the influence of product type on consumers’product evaluation and purchase intention also gradually incorporated into the researchers’ vision.Based on the Cues Theory, this research regard Product Type as a moderator variable,using2(Brand Familiarity:high vs.low) x2(Intrinsic Cue:abundant vs. deficient) x2(Product Type:Search Product vs Experience Product) experiment to examine our hypotheses.Our research references real shopping website to constructed eight different experimental site, use the change of product perceived quality to observe cues’effects in consumers’decision behavior when it varies.The study reached the following main conclusions:First, the product’s brand familiarity and intrinsic cues has a significant influence on consumers’perceptions of the quality of products,the higher the product brand familiarity, the higher the consumer’s perception of the quality;the more abundant intinsic cue is, the higher the consumer’s perception of the quality. Second, there is an interaction between brand familiarity and intrinsic cues,when both consistent, they may be strengthened with each other; When both inconsistent, negative or weakly cues will occupy a leading role.Third, product type plays a regulatory role on the relationship between brand familiarity and perceived quality, also between the relationship of intrinsic cues and perceived quality. Consumers’ perceived quality along with the change of brand familiarity extent owing to the different product types: as to experience product, product quality perception changes significantly faster than the search product; Consumers’ perceived quality varies with the change of intrinsic cues,as to search product, perception change significantly faster than the experience in the quality of products.Fourth, inconsisitent with predecessors’point of view, the interaction between brand familiarity, intrinsic cues and product type was not significant, namely whatever the product type is, external cues and intrinsic cues play the same important role on consumers’ perceptions of product’s quality.The main theoretical contributions of this study are as follows:First, we supplement study of the impact of both intrinsic cues and external cues on consumers’ perceived quality under online shopping enviroment. Second, we confirmed that the cue consistency theory not only applies to the interaction between external cues, also between external cues and intrinsic cues. Third, we confirmed thar the product type plays a regulatory role on the relationship between brand familiarity and perceived quality, also between the relationship of intrinsic cues and perceived quality. Finally, we explores that there are differences between the consumer’s decision-making behavior online and offline. The research conclusion in traditional shopping environment can not be applied to the network shopping situation ererytime, operators must adjust measures to local conditions.