Response to the commentary 'A question of our marketing or our preconceptions'.

Our paper ‘A strategy for human factors/ergonomics: developing the discipline and profession’ (Dul et al. 2012) was intended to suggest directions for and to stimulate discussions in the human factors/ergonomics (HFE) community on the future of our field. We believe that discussing the future is an urgent endeavour, as – after decades of existence – in many parts of the world HFE is often under-recognised, ill-understood and underutilised. In some parts of the world, there is even a risk of decline for HFE. We are glad that several IEA federated societies have picked up the challenge of organising discussions about our paper with their members. We are also glad that Ergonomics provides a forum for debate, and we welcome Nathanael and Marmaras’ Commentary on our paper. The authors of the Commentary raise additional perspectives on our proposed strategy and our description of high-quality HFE. In this response we do not comment on all points raised by the authors (which does not necessarily mean we agree with them all), but we react to what we consider to be two major issues: (1) external versus internal focus and (2) consequences of emphasising high-quality HFE.