Perceived quality

Perceived quality

You may have achieved excellent brand awareness and recognition, but this does not mean a customer will buy from you. Before you make a sale, customers will build up an opinion of your brand and products. This is known as perceived quality. In this context, perceived quality is a bias towards or against a particular brand. It is the view customers have of you and is subjective. They form expectations based on rational (numbers and facts) and emotional (feelings) factors. Knowledge that impacts their choice can come from many sources, such as their own experience, customer reviews, friends, media reports, etc. Customers who perceive a brand as higher quality are more satisfied, have higher levels of loyalty and become repeat customers. The customer’s post-purchase view of quality will be based on them comparing perceived quality to what they received. It is, therefore, important that you match your advertising and marketing claims.

As the picture shows below, each product contributes to how the brand is perceived. Having consistently high-quality products can create a positive brand perception:

Improved financial performance is strongly linked to perceived quality:

  • A significant factor in customer choice.

  • Customers will likely pay more and buy more frequently.

  • Decreased spending on marketing as customers recommend you to others.

  • Extremely important for sales when there are few differentiators between competitors.

Many factors impact perceived product quality. These can placed into the following categories:

  • Intrinsic - The product features, differentiators and quality.

  • Extrinsic - Factors outside of the product, such as the price or the brand’s website design.

  • Personal - Customer’s expectations, needs and previous experience.

  • Situational - Where the product is sold, for example, you demonstrate it at a well-respected conference.

Improving perceived quality for a target customer group

  • Target weak products:

    • Design - Aspects of design quality such as accessibility, usability and consistency should be reviewed, and issues addressed.

    • Performance - Improve factors like customisation, stability (if using a digital product) and security.

    • Product differentiators - Offer valuable features that others don’t have. You may also differentiate by design and performance characteristics.

    • Create an emphasis on quality attributes.

  • Counter negative reviews

    • Respond fast. Your existing customers will have strong opinions on your value, having used your product. These views can be made public and potential customers will take them seriously. The impact of bad reviews on potential customers is significant. Giving solutions to issues and responding to misinformation in real time is recommended. Identify the channels where you are mentioned regularly and monitor these, then respond in real-time to negative reviews.

    • Identify trends. As customers research you, they may find negative trends. Amazon, for example, now uses AI to summarise what customers are saying about a product. Seek to address these weaknesses, especially if they are significant reasons customers select competitors.

  • Improving the perceived quality of your brand

    • Customer testimonials. Customer testimonials help create brand awareness but can also increase perceived quality. This is done by the customer discussing the benefits they have achieved, ideally numerically.

    • Consistency. Ensure your visuals, tone of voice, and messaging are aligned across all your platforms. For example, you could be a fun, likeable company or deeply knowledgeable and serious.

    • Connect emotionally. Focus on creating the positive experiences above rather than listing product features.

    • Align with a good cause. Ideally, it should be one that has something to do with your business.

    • Create high-quality, engaging content.

    • Add a trust badge. This is a mark of authenticity, such as being a Microsoft Gold Partner.

  • Partner with prestigious brands.

  • Be socially responsible.

  • Excellent customer service:

    • Provide quick and efficient post-purchase support, such as answering product questions, processing refunds and maintenance.

    • Offer compensation guarantees upfront:

      • Replacement (if relevant)

      • Credit towards another purchase

      • Money back

  • For B2B (Business-to-business) customers, focus on building strong personal relationships. Have experts on hand to guide customers through any questions they have.

Measuring perceived quality

Information can be gathered in two different ways:

  • Quantitative data - Gathering numerical data, such as asking a question with four options.

  • Qualitative insights - Helping to understand the “why” behind people’s answers. This is often in the form of open questions. You can use these to further understand the root causes of people’s answers. Evaluating information in this way is typically slower, but it can provide much deeper insight than quantitative techniques.

Brand and product could easily get mixed up, so you have to specifically ask about your brand within your research. Look to understand these factors:

  • Knowledge - What are the types and names of the products you sell?

  • Ownership - What products have you purchased?

  • Quality - How would you rate the overall quality of your brand?

  • Quality comparison - How do you compare to other brands in terms of quality?

  • Quality consistency - How consistent is quality across the products you’ve experienced from your brand?

Gathering information

When gathering information, you should segment your customers into these groups:

  • Potential customers - Those who have not bought from you will give you a strong view of perceived quality.

  • Current customers - These people will give strong indicators based on product experience. If you have several products, you can bring together representatives from each to better understand your overall brand position.

  • Lapsed customers - These are the people who have left you. They will bring a mixture of direct experience and current brand perception. They can help you understand how your loyalty broke down and how you can repair it. The period of time they lapsed is very important:

    • 0-12 months - These will represent current product experience and are a more suitable group for determining product churn reasons. It is better to cover these in churn analysis rather than in this perceived quality research.

    • 12-24 months - These will represent a mix of previous product experience and brand perception. You can see if brand perception is improving, stable or decreasing. These people can give you an indication if they would buy again.

    • 24 months plus - These will represent long-term brand perception and help you determine how to sell to them again.

Focus groups with target customers

Focus groups allow people to share thoughts on a topic in a moderated setting.

Run a brand perception survey

Market research organisations will be able to assist here by gathering customers who meet your desired criteria.

Create an online forum

By allowing open conversations and questions from potential new customers, you will be able to understand their views better. You could ask survey questions within the forum to gain insights.