Soft reliability, a new class of problems for innovative products: "how to approach them"

This paper explores the possibility to model aspects of non-technical field complaints, which are an increasingly important category of problems, especially for high innovative consumer products. The established model is based on the innovation diffusion model of Rogers and addresses when which category of non-technical problems can be expected. Preliminary data from case study research on actual field complaint data and experimental consumer test data support some of the theoretical expectations that were derived from the models. The obtained insights offer the possibility to explore new product developments on potential non-technical field complaints that can be expected in the future in a more effective and efficient way.