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.

Response format

5-point comparative scale, anchors vary by dimension: Performance/Features/Aesthetics/Serviceability/Materials/Ease of Use (1=very poor to 5=very good); Durability (1=very short to 5=very long); Reliability (1=very low to 5=very high). Respondents rate their product relative to other products in the same category.

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

Full scale items shown. Always cite the original source when using this scale in research.

Usage notes & scoring

Composite reliability by dimension and product category (from Web Appendix): Aesthetics: cars .96, dishwashers .95, headphones .93, tablets .94. Durability: cars .93, dishwashers .90, headphones .93, tablets .91. Ease of Use: cars .94, dishwashers .92, headphones .92, tablets .93. Features: cars .93, dishwashers .94, headphones .94, tablets .92. Materials: cars .95, dishwashers .94, headphones .95, tablets .94. Performance: cars .91, dishwashers .90, headphones .93, tablets .92. Reliability: cars .95, dishwashers .95, headphones .96, tablets .95. Serviceability: cars .96, dishwashers .95, headphones .95, tablets .95. All dimensions and categories exceed .90. The overall CEPQ score is not scored by simple summation: the authors combine the eight dimension scores using formative weights that are estimated per product category, so a fixed scoring key does not apply across categories. Materials was newly proposed by the authors as a product quality dimension not previously identified in the literature. Item stems in the original paper were also adapted for the product category 'cars' with a slightly different set of category-specific items; the generic [product] wording used here reflects the core cross-category instrument. The study also employed measures of repurchase intention, satisfaction, willingness to pay a premium, expertise, and quality consciousness as outcome/moderator variables, each adapted verbatim from named prior sources rather than developed in this paper, so they are not included here.

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.

Keywords

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• Food Consumption Enjoyment2022 · 3 items
• Product Feature Centrality2023 · 4 items
• Quality of the Product2020 · 4 items
• CSR Motive Attributions (Egoistic)2021 · 3 items
• Attitude Toward the Product (Overall Evaluation)2021 · 4 items