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Hedonic approaches to measuring price and quality change in personal computer systems Chwelos, Paul
Abstract
Although computers have long been studied in terms of their changing price/performance ratio, the issue of accounting for performance in computer systems has not been adequately addressed. This paper addresses the topic in three ways. First, a survey of IS Managers and business "power-users" of personal computers was conducted to empirically determine the attributes of computer systems that provide value to users; these results guide subsequent choices regarding the operationalisation of user value. Second, an index of system performance was developed from published performance benchmarks and used as a direct measure of performance in the hedonic function. Third, a set of technical proxies was shown to adequately reproduce the performance index derived above, and was used in an alternate specification of the hedonic function. Using data on IBM-PC compatible laptop and desktop systems, price indexes were constructed using both approaches to performance measurement. The results demonstrated that both approaches yielded good explanatory power and nearly identical estimates of the rate of quality adjusted price change in PC systems. Thus, the set of technical proxies could be used to operationalise performance in a larger data set for which direct performance measures are unavailable. For the 1990s, laptop PCs were found to have decreased in quality adjusted price at an average of 39% per year while the corresponding figure for desktop PCs was 35% per year.
Item Metadata
Title |
Hedonic approaches to measuring price and quality change in personal computer systems
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Creator | |
Publisher |
University of British Columbia
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Date Issued |
2000
|
Description |
Although computers have long been studied in terms of their changing
price/performance ratio, the issue of accounting for performance in computer systems
has not been adequately addressed. This paper addresses the topic in three ways.
First, a survey of IS Managers and business "power-users" of personal computers was
conducted to empirically determine the attributes of computer systems that provide value
to users; these results guide subsequent choices regarding the operationalisation of user
value. Second, an index of system performance was developed from published
performance benchmarks and used as a direct measure of performance in the hedonic
function. Third, a set of technical proxies was shown to adequately reproduce the
performance index derived above, and was used in an alternate specification of the
hedonic function. Using data on IBM-PC compatible laptop and desktop systems, price
indexes were constructed using both approaches to performance measurement. The
results demonstrated that both approaches yielded good explanatory power and nearly
identical estimates of the rate of quality adjusted price change in PC systems. Thus, the
set of technical proxies could be used to operationalise performance in a larger data set
for which direct performance measures are unavailable.
For the 1990s, laptop PCs were found to have decreased in quality adjusted price at an
average of 39% per year while the corresponding figure for desktop PCs was 35% per
year.
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Extent |
9111576 bytes
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Genre | |
Type | |
File Format |
application/pdf
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Language |
eng
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Date Available |
2009-07-28
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Provider |
Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
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Rights |
For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use.
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DOI |
10.14288/1.0089820
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URI | |
Degree | |
Program | |
Affiliation | |
Degree Grantor |
University of British Columbia
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Graduation Date |
2000-05
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Campus | |
Scholarly Level |
Graduate
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Aggregated Source Repository |
DSpace
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Item Media
Item Citations and Data
Rights
For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use.