Disruptive factors in the evaluation of perceived quality aspects – consideration of the brand influence

Publication date: March 2020Source: International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics, Volume 76Author(s): René Germann, Lukas Kurth, Sven MatthiesenAbstractThe implementation of evaluation methods with the aim to gain knowledge of the perceived quality aspects is a challenging task because of versatile disruptive factors on the users’ cognition. Commonly known disruptive factors like the different level of experience in the usage of a system or the publicity of a brand name are considered in research approaches only marginally. This becomes even more important when the evaluated system stays in direct interaction with the evaluator and an increase of external influences can be expected. On the example of a system with strong user interaction, a research approach for an objective evaluation of quality aspects was developed with cordless drills. An experiment has been carried out with 50 craftsmen which are divided into two groups, whereby the first of which will be given original labeled and the other blinded cordless drills for rating the application quality. Evaluation was divided into a preliminary test and a practical test phase, in which selected applications were performed. Results for the preliminary evaluation of the cordless drills indicate a significant brand influence with a strong positive effect on well-known (p<.001, r=0.492, +30.7%) and a negative effect on unknown brands (p=0.029, r=0.309, -17.2%). Practical usage of the devices leads to a significant chan...
Source: International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics - Category: Occupational Health Source Type: research