How Product Quality and Affinity toward the Firm Influence Reputation for Quality

Several calls from the social evaluations literature underscore the importance of investigating the microfoundations of reputation and the potential interplay across social evaluation constructs. With the present study, we employ two controlled, randomized experiments to examine how product quality observations influence one’s perceptions of a firm’s reputation for quality. We show respondents the product qualities of multiple firms for whom respondents hold different levels of affinity, a building block of social approval. In Study 1, we expose respondents to one of four product quality combinations from a high affinity and low affinity firm, and find that both firms’ reputations for quality are penalized when they underperform their rival. Moreover, while both firms’ reputations benefit more from higher product quality, neither firm benefits from outperforming the other. In Study 2, we add a fictionalized ‘neutral’ affinity firm and simplify our product quality primers, finding that whereas the high aff...