Asymmetric Effects of Perceived Quality on Overall Evaluation and Moderating Effect of Sentiment: Evidence from Automobile Reviews

Abstract

Perceived quality is consumers’ subjective perceptions of a product’s attributes, which directly influences the overall evaluation of the product. Existing research has suggested that the perceived quality of attributes has an asymmetric effect on the overall evaluation, but limited research has been conducted on this asymmetric effect in the automobile industry and the moderating effect of sentiment. This paper investigates the asymmetric effect of perceived quality on overall evaluation using social media data from the automobile industry. First, the asymmetric effect of perceived quality on overall evaluation was identified for different attributes using penalty-reward contrast analysis (PRCA), and attribute classification was realized by calculating the IA index, i.e., Appearance is an excitement attribute and the remaining attributes are basic attributes. Second, the differences in the asymmetric effects of each attribute category were analyzed, and the basic attributes were found to have a greater effect on the overall evaluation, with a positive moderating effect of sentiment on the effect. This study contributes to perceived quality research as well as consumer evaluation research and provides manufacturers with a prioritization method for attribute improvement.

Keywords

Perceived quality / overall evaluation / asymmetric effects / OLS / automobile reviews

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