Important research questions to assess product quality
- Melinda Hurley
- Jan 19
- 5 min read
Looking for a simple, low-cost way to assess your product’s quality? Checking in on product quality is always a smart move—whether you’re troubleshooting issues or simply making sure you’re staying ahead. Here are a few common reasons you might want to test:
Sales are slipping and you need to figure out if product quality is part of the problem—or if something else is at play.
Business is strong but you want to proactively spot potential issues and confirm that customers still see your product as top-notch.
Competition is heating up. A rival has launched something similar, and you want to be sure your product still holds the edge.
We’ll go into the most important research questions to assess product quality. This will focus on products specifically, but you can apply these same principles to services too.
Before you build research questions, identify whose feedback you need
Before you start gathering feedback, define who you want to hear from and why. Clarity here ensures that your research is focused, and that the results are actionable.
Here are a few groups worth considering:
● Current customers – Understand satisfaction, identify any issues, and gauge loyalty. Happy, loyal customers help with retention and protect you against competitors.
● Potential customers – If growth is a priority, check your product’s appeal among those who haven’t purchased yet.
● Competitor customers – Learn whether your product is competitive. Does it deliver but simply lacks awareness? Or are there improvements that could win them over—without alienating your existing base? (Think “New Coke” as a cautionary tale.)
● Lapsed customers – Find out if quality played a role in why they stopped buying.
Once you know who to survey, you can move on to the important questions that form the foundation of a simple, effective product quality assessment.
Research question #1: Do they like it?
This should be the first question – ask whether customers like your product - without the influence of any other questions. Their response will give you a clear measure of overall liking.
Use a rating scale (often called a Likert scale). You can pick how many points you want on the scale, but usually a 5 or 6-point scale – like the one below – is good. Sometimes anything larger can be harder for respondents to choose an answer, but if you want more granularity in the answers, a scale that’s up to 9 or 10 points also works. But keep in mind that respondents will have a harder time responding reliably and consistently.
Which statement best describes how much you like or dislike [insert product name here]?
Like it extremely well
Like it very well
Like it quite well
Like it somewhat
Like it slightly
Not like it at all
Research question #2: Why
Follow up with an open-ended “why.” This gives context to the rating and helps you understand what’s driving positive—or negative—sentiment. Open-ended questions allow for more in-depth thoughts from the respondent versus forcing them into a choice.
To make this research actionable, you have to know what to do about it. If a lot of responses are more negative than you hoped, then it’s important to know how to fix it. If all you have is a lot of dislikes, you won’t know if it’s something simple to fix or something more complex.
If your survey tool doesn’t let you connect responses, consider splitting the question into two parts:
What, if anything, do you like about [product]?
What, if anything, do you dislike about [product]?
Or, keep it simple:
Please explain why you gave that rating.
Tip: Always ask this after the initial rating, so you don’t bias the score. Sometimes, when a respondent is forced to think about why they like or don’t like a product, it can skew their overall liking rating. You want that to be as unbiased as possible, so you get a realistic read on your product liking.
Research question #3: Expectations
This question reveals whether your product lives up to what customers expect—and if not, whether the issue is with the product itself or how it’s positioned. Customers buy your product with certain expectations in mind. Even if you have a good product, it may still not meet customer’s expectations which means customer retention, among other things, will be negatively impacted.
This can be a very simple question and scale:
Q: If [product] did not meet your expectations, why not? In what ways did it not meet your expectations?
Better than expected
About the same as expected
Not as good as expected
This is also a question that you will want to follow up with an open-ended “why,” so you understand where the disconnect is, if any.
If [insert product here] did not meet your expectations, why not? In what ways did it not meet your expectations?
You probably don’t need a “why” question if a respondent answered “better than” or “about the same,” but if you are using a program that allows you to feed a question based on the previous response or you can connect responses from the survey results you can use the same question as in the previous section above:
Please explain why you gave that rating.
Research question #4: Value
This question can only be asked if a price is connected with the product, meaning the respondent actually purchased the product or when you gave them the product to try, you also let them know the price. You don’t have to test product quality with a price, but understanding its value from a customer perspective can be enormously helpful.
This question is most useful as a rating. When reviewing the results, you can look at this rating in the context of the other questions to better understand if pricing and quality are out of sync.
For example, the product may be priced too high for its quality so the results may show the product not meeting expectations and not a good value.
Q: Considering the price for [insert product here] which statement best describes how you feel about the value of this product?
Extremely good value
Somewhat good value
Average value
Somewhat poor value
Extremely poor value
How do you collect feedback when assessing product quality?
You don’t need anything complicated to run this survey. Free tools like SurveyMonkey make it easy, or you can send a quick follow-up email after purchase with a survey link. Another option is to add the invitation to the survey link at check-out.
Depending on what method you use to send the survey, you may want to verify that they’ve actually used the product recently. You don’t want answers from those that either haven’t used it or used it a long time ago. This can easily be done as an initial question in the survey.
In summary – the important research questions for product testing
To review, below are the key questions to include in any product assessment:
Overall Liking
Why/Why Not
Expectations
Value
Product testing doesn’t have to be expensive or complex. With just a few well-designed questions, you can uncover valuable insights into quality, expectations, and value—and make confident decisions about how to move forward.
