Warranty of Misinforming: An Overview

摘要

In this paper we focus on models and methods for quantifying the risks related to a product purchase and the impact of product warranty on these risks. There are two risks associated with purchasing a product -the risk of malfunctioning, i.e., the risk of buying a product that is not up to the quality prescribed by its specifications, and the risk of misinforming - the risk of buying a product that is not suitable for the tasks it is aimed for, i.e., misunderstanding the features of the product while deciding whether to buy it. The later risk is caused by the information asymmetry, which is a natural property of any communication process. Warranty is the usual sharing mechanism of these risks between the manufacturer/ vendor and clients. In this paper we review the ideas related to quantifying the risk of misinforming and discuss the role of the warranty of misinforming. We conclude our overview by outlining several possible directions for future research.