14 DAY TRIAL // Today there are thousands of different mobile phones and every once in a while, when a new one comes out, its success will depend mainly on the public's expectations.
This is what researchers from the Helsinki Institute for Information Technology (HIIT) suggests in a recent study, that will be published at the proceedings of the 54th annual meeting of Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES) held in San Francisco next week.
They say that the more a user expects to like using a phone, the more he will like it, and forgive any usability problems.
Eeva Raita and Antti Oulasvirta carried out an experiment: they gave subjects to read either a positive or a negative product review about a new mobile phone.
After reading the review, the subjects received the phone and they performed either easy or hard tasks with it, before rating its usability through a standard questionnaire.
Positive expectations proved to have a nearly miraculous effect on the ratings, as the subjects who had read the positive review gave the phone 74% higher usability ratings than others, even if they had trouble with it.
The study's conclusion is that the perceptions the users have about the products can be strongly influenced by their expectations, more than they can tell.
Many people buy new devices because they trust brands, advertisements, product reviews, word of mouth or discussion forums, without testing them in advance.
The research also suggests that the positive perception remains strong even after the product has been bought, the consumer forgiving any future usability problem if the product is expected to be good.
Having proved that the effect of expectations on short-term formation of perceptions is that strong, Raita and Oulasvirta are now studying the effect of expectations in a more long-term use.
Helsinki Institute for Information Technology HIIT is a joint research institute of Aalto University and the University of Helsinki for basic and applied research on information technology.