Moderators of the brand image/perceived product quality relationship

Consumers often use extrinsic cues such as price and brand to infer perceived product quality. The effect of these cues is sometimes hypothesised to be moderated by variables such as product familiarity. Some authors have found a U-shaped relationship between the cues and perceived product quality, in the sense that, for a particular moderator (eg product familiarity), either low or high familiarity consumers use these cues more than those with moderate familiarity. In the current paper, this idea is extended to the brand image/perceived product quality relationship. This paper describes the testing of a model using a large sample (n = 1068) of Australian consumers and several potential moderators.