TY - JOUR TI - Two essays on consumer consensus on perceived quality DO - https://doi.org/doi:10.7282/t3-0ae9-f298 PY - 2018 AB - The concept of consensus has been investigated by scholars from various disciplines. However, in the area of marketing, few researchers have examined the role of consensus in the consumer decision-making process. Studies devoted the consumer consensus have produced conflicting results depending on the type of product examined. To shed light on its impact on the consumer decision-making process, I will investigate consumer consensus using a dataset comprised of 1144 brands over an 11-year time period. This dissertation consists of two essays about consumer consensus on quality. In the first essay, I examine antecedents of the perceived quality discrepancy (PQD) which reflect the lack of consumer consensus on quality perceptions in a market. Moreover, the impact of PQD on brand-level sales and purchase intention scores is examined. Results indicated a negative relationship between PQD and perceived quality. Similarly, PQD has a negative impact on brand-level sales and purchase intention scores. In addition, advertising expenditures generate more revenues for brands that have higher PQD. Also, the negative impact of PQD on purchase intention is higher for the brands that have higher quality. In the second essay, I examine the impact of PQD on perceived quality by time perspective. In this study, I aim to illuminate changes in quality perceptions in response to the consensus on quality. The results indicate that on average, a change in PQD can be fully realized after 1.84 years. Moreover, the short-term effect of PQD on perceived quality is higher for service brands and higher in the hedonic product categories than in the utilitarian categories. Results also indicate that the carryover duration can take as long as 2.51 years for products, while it can take as long as 1.98 years for services. KW - Management KW - Consensus (Social sciences) KW - Quality of products LA - eng ER -