Abstract
Automotive Companies have to gather a holistic set of information regarding their products from their customers. In order to be holistic, the set of information needs to contain performance and feature oriented requirements as well as subjective criteria like sensory quality perception.
The purpose of the presented study is to define consumers’ affection on perception clusters and components in terms of its importance into the whole perception and its design factors such as shapes, arrangement, layout or color.
The paper presents the Identification study for perception clusters of a compact car interior with 139 probands. The assessment focus was on haptical and optical perception. Furthermore, the study obtained information from users and the retailers' by focus groups and generated a survey questionnaire evaluating perception of quality in interior components of a car. The sample consisted of 320 car users who responded to a questionnaire that assessed the effects of perceived product quality and overall satisfaction on car users purchase intentions. Moreover, the most important components for each perception cluster were defined and the most important attributes were evaluated.
Based on results, this work will help to develop a new methodology which allows to gather and to describe customer requirements holistically and to relay them for a customer orientated product realization within the Supply Chain of the automotive industry.
Keywords: perceived product quality; supply chain; customer requirements, perceptual identification; in-car components.