How customers view a product is of the utmost importance. Based on how they view or feel about the product or service that you are offering, your business’s future may be at stake.
It may seem enough to say that your product is of high quality and reliable and that credence should be paid to what you are saying because it can be proved etc.
Wrong. Fact is customers look at different facets of the product and as a result of their overall evaluation of the product in its varying degrees, they base their liking or disliking of the product and as to whether they plan on purchasing a product or using a service in the future again.
Product Expectations
Explicit Expectations
This is what the customer hopes to see on an outward basis; the product must be actually be based on what it promises the customer; for instance if you state that the color printer must actually print 17 pages per minute then that is what your printer must really do.
It must live up to its claim. Failure to do so will result in a negative evaluation of the product being offered and the customer will very likely not delve into purchasing your products anytime soon again.
Implicit Expectations
This has to do with what the customer may expect of the product because it is the norm to do so; for instance it is a generally established fact or expectation that straighteners must have a certain shelf life; they must last for longer than six months at a time and must live up to their claim of giving one perfect hair.
Failure to do so will result in astonishment, bafflement, and make the customer feel generally dissatisfied with the product or service being offered.It will be less likely that they will ever again purchase your straighteners or other products that are being offered by your brand.
Dynamic Performance Expectations
This is how you would expect the product to evolve over time based on your expectations.For instance say the product is in need of further development say a certain kind of phone or laptop or even a car which you expect will later evolve into the kind of product that can offer a lot more than it currently does.
The interesting thing to note with this product is that very often even if you do not change its features of update it you may find that customer satisfaction will halt at a certain point; that is to say, that the customer may be neither dissatisfied nor satisfied; they may have a neutral reaction to the product. Some customers may quit buying the product as they may feel that they can opt for something better but many would still continue to buy it as it meets their price range or it still has so many suitable features that it doesn’t matter if it lacks a few un necessary ones.
Either way however, the important thing to remember is that product evaluation is a natural thing that occurs either immediately or over time based on how long the customer uses the product, whether they return to your product at some point, or even if they hope your product evolves.