Integration of customer satisfaction and sustained use of a product for value assessment

With the advancement of technology, new applications and features are introduced continuously to enhance product value. However, the phenomenon of obsolescence occurs frequently, and customer satisfaction changes over time, making value assessment of products more challenging than before. In this study, we propose a method to combine two dimensions, sustained usage time and customer satisfaction, to create a measure for quantifying the market value of a product. Customer satisfaction with and sustained usage time of a product of interest over time can be evaluated using data from a cross-sectional survey of those who have owned the product. The proposed measure for assessing the market value of a product is called satisfaction-adjusted sustained usage time, which is the integration of the product of sustained usage rate function and customer satisfaction function of the product owners over time. For illustration of the proposed method, we design a case study with the new measure and a convenient survey sample to evaluate the value of four popular smartphone brands in Taiwan. The results indicate that relative market value of Sony, Samsung and HTC compared to Apple iPhone were about 87%, 78% and 66%, respectively, based on an assessment period of 5 years.