消费者产品质量知觉研究

本文探讨了品牌、产地、价格、服务及消费者的知识经验对消费者产品质量知觉的影响。结果表明：１、品牌、产地、服务对消费者的产品质量知觉有显著影响;２、消费者对名牌产品的质量知觉显著高于不知名品牌,对进口产品质量知觉显著高于国产产品,对服务好的产品质量知觉显著高于服务差的产品;３、知识经验丰富的消费者的产品质量知觉易受品牌的影响,而知识经验不足的消费者的产品质量知觉易受价格、服务的影响。     

Effects of product type and contextual cues on eliciting naive theories of popularity and exclusivity

This research shows in a series of studies that exposing consumers to functional products evokes the naive theory of popularity, whereas exposing them to self-expressive products induces belief in the naive theory of exclusivity. The research further demonstrates that when the naive theory elicited by product type is matched by the appropriate contextual purchasing cues regarding the interest of others, it results in greater purchase intentions than when those cues are mismatched. The research specifies that the matching effect for functional products is mediated by consumers' perceptions of product quality, whereas mediation for self-expressive products occurs through consumers' self-perceptions regarding the extent to which the product conveys uniqueness. Finally, the research illustrates that an explicit signal of product quality (e.g., a favorable rating in Consumer Reports) attenuates the effect associated with the contextual cues regarding the interest of others.     

The Effect of Scarcity on Anticipated Price Appreciation

Researchers in psychology and marketing have found that consumers' perceptions and evaluations of a product's attractiveness, desirability, expensiveness, quality, and taste are affected by knowledge that the product is scarce. This study examines scarcity's effect on a new variable—anticipated price appreciation. Although scarcity does not affect a product's actual potential for price appreciation, news reports of scarce collectibles that have appreciated in value may lead people to develop naive economic theories associating scarcity with price appreciation. Consistent with this expectation, we found that scarcity increased the anticipated price appreciation of two collectible products. The practical implications of this result are discussed along with issues for future research.     

The Price Is Right—Or Is It? A Reference Point Model of Two-Party Price Negotiations

This paper develops a social cognitive, reference point model of two-party price negotiations. The theoretical focus is on the role that reference points play as a means of calibration in the individual negotiator's decision processes and as a means of social influence in bargaining. Three studies are presented which examine how reference points based on personal preferences and budget constraints (i.e., reservation values) are combined with reference points based on available market information to affect outcomes. These studies support the interpretation that in captive transactions, contextual cues determine the extent to which market information versus reservation values influence outcomes. Certain contextual cues trigger perceptions of low versus high price variance, which in turn, lead negotiators to weight market information more or less heavily in internal processing and bargaining. When perceptions of low price variance are present, market information influences outcomes more than private reservation values. When perceptions of high price variance are present, reservation values tend to be more dominant in determining outcomes.     

Exploration of counsellors' perceptions of the redesigned service pathways: a qualitative study of a UK university student counselling service

To address the mental health needs of students, UK universities offer bespoke student counselling services. Economic pressures have led services to find innovative ways of redesigning their service pathway. Few studies have investigated staff perceptions of these changes. The aim of this study was to investigate perceptions of staff employed as counsellors at a student counselling service at a UK university that underwent service delivery changes. Face-to-face interviews were conducted with counsellors (n = 5). Framework analysis was used to identify themes and meta-themes. Five meta-themes were identified: the overarching service ethos and service working style; change in the university context; impact of change on working practice; recording and perceived impact on confidentiality; acceptability and effectiveness. Changes to the service resulted in a more efficient service that is perceived to be more acceptable to students. Staff perceptions differed regarding how changes have affected their counselling practice. Despite these differences, the increase in workload was consistently expressed. Tensions remain as staff strive to maintain high standards of service in this changing context. Future research should investigate the process of developing and implementing change as student counselling services strive to evolve sustainable ways of working.     

Influence of contextual information and past prices on the willingness to pay and expected quality evaluations

This study conducted two experiments to assess consumers' willingness to pay or the expected quality in response to different levels of contradictory contextual information (regarding price and quality) and the presence of anchors in the form of past price paid. First, the results show that the contextual information was decisive in the formation of reference prices that affect the willingness to pay. Second, the anchors did not influence the evaluation of the willingness to pay and the expected quality. And third, it was observed that the coherence of the contextual information (price–quality correlation) performs a moderating role in the relation between reference prices and expected quality. These results suggest that anchors are less important than contextual information in the evaluation process of the willingness to pay and the expected quality, and that therefore neither an adjustment nor a priming mechanism is activated. We found that the coherence of the contextual information influences how individuals evaluate a service. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

关系规范对消费者抱怨意愿及潜在动机的影响模型

现有的关于向企业进行抱怨的研究均建立在“理性人”的假设之上, 而忽视了消费者同时作为“社会人”需要遵循一定的规范。本文引入关系规范的概念(共有关系规范, 交换关系规范), 通过实验的方法探究其对消费者的抱怨意愿及潜在动机的影响。实验一的结果显示在服务失误水平低的情况下, 共有关系规范下的被试相对于交换关系规范下的被试更乐意向企业抱怨, 而在服务失误水平高的情况下, 这种差异不显著。实验二进一步验证了这种关系, 并发现共有关系规范下的被试向企业抱怨, 是为了帮助其发现和改进服务中存在的问题, 以提高服务质量, 具有利他动机。     

Referrers' Perceived Utility and Outcomes of Clinical Neuropsychological Assessment in an Adolescent and Young Adult Public Mental Health Service

Despite frequent informal or anecdotal acknowledgement of the usefulness of neuropsychological services within various settings, including mental health settings, few studies have formally investigated the satisfaction, perceived utility, or outcomes associated with such a service. This survey‐based study evaluated referring clinicians’ (n = 35) perceptions of the usefulness and outcomes associated with the provision of clinical neuropsychological assessment and feedback within an adolescent and young adult public mental health service in Melbourne, Australia. The results suggest that referrers perceive the neuropsychological service, including formal neuropsychological assessment report and verbal and written feedbacks, as a highly useful adjunct to their clinical practice. In addition, referrers frequently reported clinically meaningful outcomes in association with the neuropsychological service, including diagnostic changes or additions (11% of clients referred), changes to approaches in treatment (52% of clients referred), and increased or appropriate access to services, education, or work (33% of clients referred). Referrers also reported that almost 60% of neuropsychological assessment reports were forwarded to other services or clinicians involved in the client's care. The findings suggest that mental health settings are likely to benefit from routine inclusion of specialist neuropsychology services. However, future research should also examine client and family perceptions regarding the satisfaction and usefulness of neuropsychological services.     

The time windows of the sense of agency

The sense of agency depends on some internal cues that derive from action control, as well as external cues like contextual information and prior information (degree of contingency between an action and is effect). We assessed whether external agency cues are combined with internal agency cues to affect the sense of agency. In two experiments participants performed a movement (button press) that elicited, after a varying delay, an effect (ball appearing on a screen), and reported their sense of agency over the effect (full, partial or no-agency) while internal cues (premotor information) and external cues (contextual and prior information) were manipulated. We assessed the effect of agency cues on the delays at which the sense of agency varied. The delays were increased with premotor signals but were decreased with contextual information. These findings favour a model of integration of internal and external agency cues over time.     

Service Delivery Issues and Program Evaluation in Pediatric Psychology

Presents a framework for categorizing pediatric psychology research into practice and service system outcomes and functioning. The questions of importance are (a) who is being served, (b) what services are provided, (c) how treatments are implemented, (d) how services are organized and staffed, (e) what are the outcomes of the services, (f) how do various consumers perceive services, (g) how services are reimbursed, and (h) what are alternatives and innovations? The framework of program evaluation is detailed for domains most germane to service delivery in pediatric/child health psychology. Such domains include diagnostic information on patients, types of intervention, behavioral/psychological outcome variables, costs of treatments, service system functioning, and perceptions of satisfaction from multiple sources. This framework may be useful in directing future research on the delivery of services in pediatric psychology settings, thereby adding to the value of the field.     

Referential Form and Memory for the Discourse History

The way we refer to things in the world is shaped by the immediate physical context as well as the discourse history. But what part of the discourse history is relevant to language use in the present? In four experiments, we combine the study of task-based conversation with measures of recognition memory to examine the role of physical contextual cues that shape what speakers perceive to be a part of the relevant discourse history. Our studies leverage the differentiation effect, a phenomenon in which speakers are more likely to use a modified expression to refer to an object (e.g., dotted sock) if they had previously described a similar object (e.g., striped sock) than when they had not described a similar object. Two physical cues—the background that framed the to-be-described pictures and the position of the pictures in the display—were manipulated to alter perceptions about the relevant discourse context. We measured the rate with which speakers modify referring expressions to differentiate current from past referents. Recognition memory measures following the conversation probed what was and was not remembered about past discourse referents and contexts. Analysis of modification rates indicated that these contextual grouping cues shaped perceptions about the relevant discourse context. The contextual cues did not affect memory for the referents, but the memory for past referents was better for speakers than for listeners. Our findings show that perceptions about the relevant discourse history are a key determinant of how language is used in the moment but also that conversational partners form asymmetric representations of the discourse history.     

Caregiver Factors Predicting Service Utilization Among Youth Participating in a School-based Mental Health Intervention

Large numbers of children and adolescents experience diagnosable psychiatric disturbances; however, the majority of those with need do not utilize mental health services. Characteristics of caregivers are important predictors of which youth will access and continue to use services over time. In recent years school-based mental health intervention programs have played a key role in identifying youth with mental health needs and linking them to treatment. In this study we sought to identify the caregiver demographic and contextual factors that predict days of service use among youth participating in a school-based mental health intervention program. Our sample included 85 youth ages 5–18 and their caregivers. We analyzed the data using bivariate and multivariate Poisson regressions with caregiver factors as the independent variables and days of service as the dependant variable. We found significant bivariate and multivariate associations for every caregiver demographic (sex, age, race) and contextual (education, employment, income, insurance, health, strain, and was it the caregivers idea to seek treatment) factor that was examined. In this study we identified the caregiver factors that are likely important in predicting youth service utilization even when steps have been taken to improve identification and access.     

Nonverbal communication of couples in conflict

This article examined the rates, contextual meanings, and attributional meanings of nonverbal behavior occurring during role-played conflict between dating couples. Eighty couples reported perceptions of their own behaviors and their partners' behaviors and were observed in a laboratory setting by trained raters. The nonverbal channel was used significantly more by females than by males and to express approval rather than disapproval. However, the nonverbal-disapproval summary category demonstrated weak validity. Eye contact had the most complex, unexpected contextual meanings. Reduced eye contact appeared to variously convey disapproval, cues of lower interpersonal power, and a reduction of intimacy to compensate for accompanying increases in other approval behaviors. Despite significant correlations between nonverbal and verbal behaviors, dating partners rarely based their perceptions of their behavior or their partners' behavior upon their rates of nonverbal behaviors.     

High voice pitch mitigates the aversiveness of antisocial cues in men's speech

Speech contains both explicit social information in semantic content and implicit cues to social behaviour and mate quality in voice pitch. Voice pitch has been demonstrated to have pervasive effects on social perceptions, but few studies have examined these perceptions in the context of meaningful speech. Here, we examined whether male voice pitch interacted with socially relevant cues in speech to influence listeners’ perceptions of trustworthiness and attractiveness. We artificially manipulated men's voices to be higher and lower in pitch when speaking words that were either prosocial or antisocial in nature. In Study 1 , we found that listeners perceived lower-pitched voices as more trustworthy and attractive in the context of prosocial words than in the context of antisocial words. In Study 2 , we found evidence that suggests this effect was driven by stronger preferences for higher-pitched voices in the context of antisocial cues, as voice pitch preferences were not significantly different in the context of prosocial cues. These findings suggest that higher male voice pitch may ameliorate the negative effects of antisocial speech content and that listeners may be particularly avoidant of those who express multiple cues to antisociality across modalities.     

Assessing the multidimensional and hierarchical structure of SERVQUAL

Parasuraman, Zeithaml, and Berry introduced SERVQUAL in 1998 as a scale to measure service quality. Since then, researchers have proposed several variations. This study examines the development of the tool. Marketing researchers have first challenged the conceptualization of a perceptions-expectations gap and have concluded that the performance-based measures are adequate to capture consumers' perception of service quality. Some researchers have argued that the five dimensions of the SERVQUAL scale only focus on the process of service delivery and have extended the SERVQUAL scale into six dimensions by including the service outcome dimension. Others have proposed that service quality is a multilevel construct and should be measured accordingly. From a sample of 467 undergraduate students data on service quality toward up-scale restaurants were collected. Using the structural equation approach, two measurement models of service quality were compared, the extended SERVQUAL model and the restructured multilevel SERVQUAL model. Analysis suggested that the latter model fits the data better than the extended one.     

Communicating Price-Quality Relationships

Despite myriad studies concerning the effects of price on perceived-quality, the results are inconsistent. These inconsistencies have prompted the call for greater theory development to help provide a more comprehensive understanding of the process through which consumers develop perceived-quality. A theory the Elaboration Likelihood Model, could be applied to suggest that it is essential to identify the level of involvement when predicting the effects of variables on perceived-quality. Yet, previously reported perceived-quality research has not examined whether a change in price also changes the level of involvement. The impact of price savings on the level of involvement was examined in the experiment reported in this paper. Results of this research suggest that communicating price savings can affect the level of involvement. Experimental results also suggest that consumers with high involvement develop their attitudes and perceptions of technical quality from a careful evaluation of the arguments presented in the message. Conversely, consumers with low involvement lack motivation to evaluate those arguments and they have little effect on attitudes or perception of technical quality. Consequently, the experimental results support the Elaboration Likelihood Model.     

The impact of parental attachment and supervision on fear of crime among adolescent males

This paper examines the effect of parental attachment and supervision on fear of crime among adolescent males. Earlier work has suggested that feelings of powerlessness and association with deviant peers have a significant impact on adolescent fear of crime. As the nature of the parent-adolescent relationship is also a key predictor of adolescent self-concept and quality of peer relationships, we felt that parental attachment and supervision should also impact fear of crime. Using self-report surveys from 318 incarcerated adolescent males, we examine the effect of parental attachment and supervision, along with other demographic and contextual variables, on fear of criminal victimization, perceived safety, and perceptions of risk. The results indicate that those boys who are most attached to their parents are less fearful of criminal victimization and feel safer in their environment than do their counterparts with weaker parental attachments. Additionally, those boys whose parents supervise them closely are more fearful of criminal victimization, but have lower levels of perceived risk of victimization. Implications and ramifications for social policies and future research are also discussed.     

Service employees give as they get: internal service as a moderator of the service climate-service outcomes link

We lend theoretical insight to the service climate literature by exploring the joint effects of branch service climate and the internal service provided to the branch (the service received from corporate units to support external service delivery) on customer-rated service quality. We hypothesized that service climate is related to service quality most strongly when the internal service quality received is high, providing front-line employees with the capability to deliver what the service climate motivates them to do. We studied 619 employees and 1,973 customers in 36 retail branches of a bank. We aggregated employee perceptions of the internal service quality received from corporate units and the local service climate and external customer perceptions of service quality to the branch level of analysis. Findings were consistent with the hypothesis that high-quality internal service is necessary for branch service climate to yield superior external customer service quality.