Quế Hương

Perceived quality -> perceived value

H1: Perceived product quality is positively related to perceived value.

The benefits are measured through a perceived level of quality (level of working superiority), a
bundle of attributes in comparison with the consumer’s expectations. This perspective went even
so far, that some authors in the past somehow even equated the concepts of perceived quality
with perceived value and that entailed that many practitioners failed to distinguish between the
concepts of perceived quality and perceived value and often used the terms interchangeably
(Caruana et al., 2000). Olshavsky (1985, in Rowley, 1998) views quality as a form of an overall
evaluation of a product. Similarly, Holbrook and Corfman (1981, in Rowley, 1998) suggested
that quality acts as a relatively global value judgment. It is created in relationships between
customers and suppliers in which both parties are active (Eriksson et al., 1999). It embodies
relatively lower intensity of an effective component in the perception of a service (Oliver, 1996,
in Stauss, 1999). According to the “integrative approach” advocated by Klaus (1985, in Snoj,
1992) quality of service could even be understood as its value to the customer. It is considered to
be more congruent with long-term attitude (Bolton and Drew, 1991;

- Perceived product quality is a critical issue for both producers and marketers as PQ may provide
an opportunity for differentiation. PQ is conceptualized as “a consumer's judgment about the
superiority or excellence of a product” (Zeithaml, 1998, p.3). Cue utilization theory emphasized
that both extrinsic and intrinsic cues provide consumers to infer product quality (Collins-Dodd
and Lindley, 2003, p.346). Intrinsic cues are “product-related attributes-such as price, brand
name, and packaging-which are not part of the physical product and intrinsic cues represent
product-related attributes, such as ingredients, that cannot be manipulated without also altering
physical properties of the product” (Richardson et al., 1994, p.29).
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In the past finding, perceived quality has been defined as the consumer's judgment about a product's
overall excellence or superiority (Zeithaml, 1988). Under a developed theory of Sofiyya Mazlan et al.
(2016), the study showed that when the quality of a product perceived by consumers becomes higher, the
perceived value increases, and the purchase intention also increases. In other words, there is a linkage
between perceived quality and perceived value (Chen & Chen, 2010). This conclusion is supported by
Toivonen et al., (2012)’s study as the quality of a product is a subjective evaluation of the degree of the overall
excellence of the total product (Toivonen, 2012). It is therefore expected that perceived product value has
sometimes conceptualized the buyer’s judgement regarding perceived product quality and market price, and the
relationship between them (Sweeney & Soutar, 2001; Woodall, 2003). In this study, along with the concepts of
perceived quality and perceived value, it is suggested that when students perceive a product to be of good
quality in terms of its attributes the students are likely to perceive it to be valuable. Based on the above, the
present work argues:
H1: Perceived product quality is positively related to perceived value.

There is a linkage between product quality and product value (Chen & Chen, 2010). This is so because the
quality of a product is a subjective evaluation of the degree of the overall excellence of the total product
(Toivonen, 2012). In other words, the perceived product quality is a function of what the buyers perceive to be
valuable attributes of the products (Woodall, 2003; Kuo, Deng & Wu, 2009; Lu & Hsiao, 2010). It is therefore
expected that rational buyers choose the product providing the highest value with regard to the utility that the
total product provides them (Toivonen, 2012). As a result of this, perceived product value has sometimes
conceptualized the buyer’s judgement regarding perceived product quality and market price, and the
relationship between them (Sweeney & Soutar, 2001; Woodall, 2003). Accordingly in this study, it is expected
that when students perceive a product to be of good quality in terms of its attributes the students are likely to
perceive it to be valuable. Thus, it is hypothesized that H1: Perceived product quality is positively related to the
students’ perceived value of electronic gadgets