Consumer product portability as related to warranty rulemaking

Abstract

The Federal Trade Corrmission (FTC) has the responsibility for determining what may be reasonably expected of consumers in their fulfillment of the terms of a consumer product warranty. Such determination necessitates, in part, providing an empirical basis for defining and quantifying various factors influencing product portability. This report discusses the problem of defining consumer product portability within the context of a consumer product return activity, offers a working definition of product portability within this context, summarizes and discusses the results and utility of previous portability related studies, and describes the results of a controlled experiment which more directly relates to the task of establishing maximum reasonable product weight for a consumer product return activity. Statistically significant differences in maximum reasonable product weight were found for the variables of method of product carry and sex of customer. No statistically significant differences were found for the variables of consumer age and product size (at least for the sizes chosen for study) . Distributions of maximum reasonable weight for product return are presented and recommendations for warranty rulemaking are given.