Application of degradation test data to advertisement of consumer electronic products

Two kinds of reliability tests (accelerated life test and degradation test) are often performed in the process of developing a new electronic product in order to guarantee its improved performance over the lifetime. As a result of such tests, several reliability indices (parameters) can be estimated. Advertisers of a new product can utilise one of these indices as a benchmarking point against the existing products. Copies in advertisement can be typically very short and may only deliver information based on the point estimate of a parameter or even in terms of lifetime, itself, which is a random variable. In this paper, we show how the advertisement can mislead potential customers in terms of their perception in the reliability of the product. Additionally, we propose the way to identify the lifetime distribution based on the degradation test of an electronic item.