Abstract
Compared with the past, people today have increased the average number of purchases and the range of products they buy because of their higher level of consumption. However, their time per purchase for product selection has become more scarce. Moreover, products today are more technologically complicated so that it has become more difficult for consumers to judge product quality. As a result, people tend to use rules of thumb to simplify the process of product selection.
One rule of thumb is to believe that certain manufacturers always have higher quality products than others.
This research tests whether this rule of thumb works in the Japanese market. The data was collected from the 1978 to 1987 issues of Monthly Consumers product testing magazine published by the Japan Consumers' Association.
The results of the study indicates that there were not any manufacturers whose products always had higher/lower quality than others. In addition to this research, previous studies showed that price is not an indicator of quality in the Japanese market. All of these studies suggest that consumers had better use objective information such as product testing magazines, at least when they choose durable goods in the Japanese market.
