Track: Six Sigma

Abstract

This paper will study the consumer research regarding the purchasing decision of a laptop and its extended warranty protection plan.  JMP Choice Design and Model platforms were conducted to design the choice survey and analyze the survey results through stratified sampling method.  Utility profiler and Probability profiler could help consumers decide their preferred product based on statistical modeling.  To help consumer decide whether to purchase the extended warranty protection plan, production sale and field return data were analyzed through JMP Reliability Life Distribution platform.  Weibull model has the best goodness of fit to estimate the reliability failure rate.  By considering the market value at the warranty service request time and the estimated survival probability, the cost of not purchasing the extended warranty protection would be significantly lower was compared against the warranty offers.  JMP Reliability Forecast platform was utilized to forecast the future field return based on the estimated sale volume and the reliability Weibull model. The forecasted information could help Service Provider manage the warranty cost, loading ahead of time.  This Choice Design, Model and Reliability Life Distribution, Forecast approach can be commonly applied to most consumer research fields.