The Value of Field Feedback in Consumer Electronics: a case study

摘要

Due to the high degree of innovation in consumer electronics, manufacturers have to be first on the market, what puts pressure on all the relevant activities, including the time for testing. This stimulates manufacturers to collect field information about customers' experiences with innovative products [1]. If this information is well specified and reaches developers in time, it might be possible to prevent the recurrence of old failures in new generations of products [2]. This paper presents the result of a case study with an innovative audio product. The quality and speed of the field feedback is analyzed on its contribution to product quality improvement. The three most important conclusions are the following: · The speed of the field failure information feedback flow causes that existing product problems are likely to recur in several successive product generations. · The present field failure information structure hardly generates technical field failure information. · If most of the field failures are software problems, as was the case for the innovative audio product in this study, then it is relevant to investigate what solutions for software updates (e.g. via the dealer or via internet) are most attractive.