Views From The Hills of Kentucky :: Perception or Preference

Views from the Hills by R. E. Stevens, GENESIS II (The Second Beginning) E-Mail views@aol.com

Perception or Preference

Our world of product research delves into two areas of product evaluation. That is, how the user perceives the performance of a product and how the product really performs.

In the first area, perception, we are interested in how the user views the performance of the product, real or imagined. The user is free to assess the product performance value under his or her standards of excellence while weighing the product characteristics in his or her order of importance.

In the second area of testing, performance, we are interested in determining what actually takes place under real world conditions. Of prime concern is what has happened and not whether the user considers it important or even if it is liked or disliked (factual data instead of attitudinal).

Both perception and performance are extremely important in the development and improvement of a product. However, while both are valuable perspectives, they are usually incompatible in a single research project. when you ask a user to observe and record information concerning a particular event or group of events, you automatically distort the user's rationale of importance. By the mere fact that you have asked for the observation of a performance characteristic, you have indicated importance and the user will challenge his or her degree of importance placed on the event.

Some product research people have attempted to estimate performance data in attitude studies by asking for very specific evaluations at the recall of non-directed studies. For example, panelists are asked at recall to:

identify specific soils and stains from a list of eleven encountered while using a laundry detergent test product, and
to evaluate the performance of the product on the specific soils

Some of the stains are very common, such as collar and cuff soil, dirt and dingies. These are present in almost everyone's laundry. When you ask if the soil/stain was present in the laundry with only a "yes" or "no" reply option, we put the respondent in a difficult situation. Does she say "no" when she didn't see it but knows it was most likely there, or does she say "yes" and have to evaluate the performance? I believe the participant's respond as honestly as possible by saying the soil was present and use the best available data to express their evaluation of effectiveness. But the best available data in many cases will not be the effectiveness on the specific soil but overall satisfaction.

When this type of data appears in a clean and well-formatted report complete with average ratings, the numbers take on the appearance of quality data. It is imperative to know the source and circumstances of the data.