Relating consumer perceptions of pork quality to physical product characteristics

Consumers form expectations about pork quality at the point of purchase based on the quality cues available to them in the shop. These expectations can be confirmed or disconfirmed during consumption. A study is described showing how consumers' quality expectations and experience are formed, hotel they are interrelated, and how both of them are related to a number of physical product characteristics commonly used to assess objective pork quality. Results show that quality expectations and quality experience diverge widely, and that both of these are only weakly related to objective product characteristics. In some cases, an objective product characteristic may even have a positive effect on quality expectations but a negative effect on quality experience, or vice versa. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.