Role of Extrinsic Cues in the Formation of Quality Perceptions

Anam Javeed; Mohammed Aljuaid; Zoya Khan; Zahid Mahmood; Duaa Shahid

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2022.913836

Role of Extrinsic Cues in the Formation of Quality Perceptions

Front Psychol. 2022 Jul 25:13:913836. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.913836. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Anam Javeed^{1

2}, Mohammed Aljuaid³, Zoya Khan⁴, Zahid Mahmood⁵, Duaa Shahid⁶

Affiliations

¹ Department of Management Sciences, University of Wah, Wah Cantt, Pakistan.
² School of Business Management, University Utara Malaysia, Kedah, Malaysia.
³ Department of Health Administration, College of Business Administration, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
⁴ Department of Management Sciences, Peer Meher Ali Shah Arid Agriculture University, Rawalpindi, Pakistan.
⁵ Department of Management, College of Business Administration, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
⁶ Hult International Business School, Cambridge, MA, United States.

Abstract

Examining the quality perceptions of consumers has often been recommended as an international research paradigm. This study is grounded in the Pakistani consumer market to evaluate the impact of food packaging cues on perceived product quality. The moderating effect of consumer knowledge was also taken into consideration in the study. A signaling theory was used in the study for its established predictive power in consumer behavior, marketing, and various fields of research. Based on the essence of the signaling theory, this study hypothesized that food packaging cues cast a positive impact on perceived product quality and consumer knowledge moderates these relationships. By using the sample of 504 consumers, data were gathered using the mall intercept method following a multi-stage sampling technique. The responses were analyzed using Statistical Package for Social sciences (SPSS) and Smart Partial Least Square (PLS). The findings of this study unveil that the extrinsic cues' brand name, price, nutritional labels, and precautionary labels were positively and significantly related to the perceived product quality. However, the country of origin cast no impact on the perceived product quality. Consumer knowledge reflected a moderation effect on the relationships between brand name and country of origin with the perceived product quality whereas it exerted no moderation impact on the relationships of price, nutritional labels, and precautionary labels with the perceived product quality. As the results exhibit that Pakistani consumers rely on food packaging cues for perceiving a product, hence it is recommended that marketers and policymakers develop appropriate marketing strategies focused on the significance of food packaging cues.

Keywords: consumer market; cues; perceived product quality; perceptions; signaling theory.