Customers' Experienced Product Quality

What it measures

This instrument measures how customers experience the quality of a tangible product across eight underlying dimensions: aesthetics, durability, ease of use, features, materials, performance, reliability, and serviceability. Each dimension is captured with three items rated relative to comparable products. The eight dimension scores feed into an overall Customers' Experienced Product Quality (CEPQ) index, modelled as a formative second-order construct: the dimensions define what quality means for a given product category rather than simply reflecting an underlying trait, so their relative weighting can shift depending on what is being evaluated. Item wording uses a generic product placeholder, letting the instrument travel across product categories without dimension-specific rewording; it was originally validated on cars, dishwashers, headphones, and tablet computers in the US.

Scale items

Aesthetics

• The appeal of my [product]'s design is
• The overall attractiveness of my [product] is
• The look and feel of my [product] is

Durability

• The time span for which my [product] runs/will run without any major defects is
• The life span of my [product] is/will be
• The amount of time for which my [product] works/will work perfectly even under heavy usage is

Ease of Use

• My user experience with the various functions my [product] offers is/was
• My [product]'s ease of use is
• The usability of my [product] is

Features

• The number of additional features my [product] offers is
• The innovativeness of the extra features offered by my [product] is
• The excitement I get from my [product]'s extra features is

Materials

• The endurance of the materials used in my [product] is
• The robustness of the materials used in my [product] is
• The standard of materials used in my [product] is

Performance

• The overall performance of my [product] is
• My [product] consistently performs
• How well does your [product] perform its core functions?

Reliability

• The frequency of defects/glitches of my [product] is
• The severity of defects/glitches of my [product] is
• My [product]'s probability of failure or malfunctioning is

Serviceability

• The competence of my [product]'s customer service staff is
• The responsiveness of my [product]'s customer service staff is
• The promptness with which my [product]'s customer service reacts to my issues is

Citation

Das Guru, R.R. and Paulssen, M. (2020), "Customers' experienced product quality: scale development and validation", European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 54 No. 4, pp. 645-670.