A new Slop University research poster links the counter condition band of 1,187 traded-in handsets to the disposition each was given at the processing facility, and finds the four lower bands indistinguishable.
A study of 1,187 handsets finds the four lower bands sending devices to the same processing stream in near-identical proportions
The band written on a trade-in receipt is one of the few institutional judgements a customer watches being made, and the only one that changes what they are paid for the phone in their hand. A research poster lodged today with the Office of Research Outputs follows that band past the counter.
The Grade Stops at the Counter tracked 1,187 handsets by asset tag from 31 stores of one electronics chain through to the processing floor, and set each device’s counter band against the disposition the facility recorded for it. Handsets in the top band went to tested resale in four cases out of ten. Below it, the four remaining bands are not separable: board harvest takes between 63.8 and 65.3 per cent of each, while the credit offered across those same four bands spans $186.
The people applying the band apply it carefully and consistently, which is why it took a facility record to see the rest of it. We are grateful to the counter staff who let us watch, and we would not want the finding read as one about them.
— Dr Marit Osayande, Lecturer and Convenor of the Living Dashboard
Dr Iben Chikere, Lecturer in the School of Emergent Priorities, worked on the linkage and put the interesting part at the moment the band stops being consulted: “It is read once, when it is written, and after that it travels with the device without anyone reading it again.”
The study was supported by the Indicator Stewardship Seed Fund, and joins a line of work the University has been accumulating on measures that hold their place because nothing downstream ever contradicts them.
The full poster is available from the University’s research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.kum49s.