Effect of Price and Brand on Common Platform Appliance Failure

Abstract

This main objective of this study is to determine if common platform dishwashing products have similar warranty failure rates when brands and price points are variable. Data for this study are based upon over four years of data involving one million individual sales and over 150,000 warranty failures of a common platform dishwashing appliance. It is concluded that there are similar failure rates between common platform dishwashers when different brands are at the same price point. Other conclusions indicate that there are non-similar failure rates between common platform dishwashers when the same brand is at different price points.

There is a significant resource cost in the development of products. To minimise the resource cost and maximise the return on investment, many companies develop several new products from one common platform. Common platforms spread across several separate brands. Different brands attract different customers who have different perceptions of quality. Customers view quality as a mix of utility and reliability and expect high reliability during the warranty period. It is often assumed by the developer that the warranty failure rate will be similar for common product platforms even when products are marketed under different price points. The goal of this research is to test if this common assumption is accurate.