Perceived Quality Essay

1. Perceived Quality: - Before understanding the logic of perceived quality, let us understand what perception is.

“Perception is a psychological behaviour through which a person identifies, organizes and evaluates the various stimuli into a meaningful and comprehensible layout.”

Perceived quality can be defined as the customer's opinion about the overall quality or image of the product or service or the brand itself with respect to its purpose of use as against its alternatives. It might not be linked to the actual product but is more skewed towards the brand image, customer experience with the brand and its other products, peer opinions, etc. thus perceived quality differs from objective quality, product-based quality and manufacturing quality.

It cannot be measured on quantitative grounds, preferably because judgements about what is important to the customers varies widely across different personalities, needs and preferences.

If it’s a product, the customers consider the following seven features for evaluation: performance, features, conformity with specifications, reliability, durability, serviceability, fit and finish.

Whereas if it’s a service, customer decision is based on the following five features: tangibles, reliability, competence, responsiveness and empathy.

The basic concept of perceived quality takes into account both the extrinsic and intrinsic features of the product. Customers’ knowledge about the product or the brand and his past experiences with it are important decision variables.

If the customers’ expectations are just met, then he is satisfied. If they are not, the customer is unhappy. If the product/service/brand exceed the customers’ expectations, then he is delighted. This further drives his perception about the

Competence: Does the bank have the right skilled personnel employed? Does the convey trust and confidence through the services offered?

4. Responsiveness: Is the sales staff willing to help customers and provide prompt and reliable services?

5. Empathy: Does the bank provide caring and individually focused attention to its customers’?

2. Pre-emptive Pricing: -

Price is nothing but the money charged for any product offered or service rendered. Different strategies are used to set the price of products. All these fall under the umbrella of marketing strategies.

Pre-emptive pricing is a technique of selling products at below normal/market prices for a short span of time to attract more customers and combat the competitors and discourage potential entrants from entering the market. It helps a company to raise its market share. Once it becomes a market leader, it raises its prices to a profitable level. It is profitable in markets which have fewer barriers to entry and should not be confused with predatory pricing.

The conditions for selecting this pricing strategy are:

a) One should hold a strong position in a small to medium market.

b) There should be sufficient coverage of the market and considerable customer loyalty to discourage and combat