An empirical investigation of the price-quality relationship in services.

摘要

Several researchers have over the years, been concerned with the potential presence of a price-quality relationship in marketing commodities. This research stream has to date, however, only tested tangible products and has been primarily focused even narrower on low priced nondurable types of products. This makes generalizations about the price-quality relationship across market entities very difficult to make.;The purpose of this research is to address the question, is there a generalized price-quality relationship in services? Since quality risk has been proposed as a variable which mediates the price-quality relationship (Peterson and Wilson 1985), several services which represent different levels of quality risk have been tested to see how strongly price is used as a surrogate to quality. Familiarity has also been included as an independent variable since prior research has identified it as being a potential component of service quality (Scitovsky 1944-45; Stigler 1961). These two variables are particularly useful in understanding the perceived service quality evaluations process. Zeithaml (1981) has hypothesized that due to the nature and characteristics of services they are normally more difficult to evaluate than products. Low familiarity-high quality risk services should therefore be extremely difficult for consumers to evaluate. This logically would make price, as one of the few tangible cues available in some services, an important cue in the service quality evaluation of these types of services.;This experiment uses a 2 x 2 x 3 factorial design and is replicated using three different groups of services. The independent variables are price (2 levels), familiarity (3 levels), and quality risk (3 levels). The dependent variable, quality risk, is measured by using three different types of five point scales. These items were combined together to form a scale which ranged from zero to fifteen.;The data was analyzed by conducting an analysis of variance. Price was not found to be significant in any of the nine services which were tested. Quality risk was also not found to be significant although familiarity was in two of the three replications.;This study furnishes some evidence that price-quality relationships may not be stronger in service than products as has been hypothesized. One study, however, can not be conclusive on this issue.;Managers, however, are cautioned not to rely solely on price to communicate quality in services. Other variables such as facilities and contact personnel may eventually prove to be stronger influences on quality perceptions than is price. More research is definitely called for in this area.