PRIORITIZATION OF CUSTOMER NEEDS IN HOUSE OF QUALITY USING CONJOINT ANALYSIS

The priority structure of customer needs in House of Quality (HOQ) forms the basis for the company to make the product more attractive to customers. In the traditional Quality Function Deployment (QFD) approach, the priority structure of customer needs is developed through assigning different importance weights for customer needs, which are based on QFD team members' direct experience with the customers or on the results of surveys. In this paper Conjoint analysis is adopted to obtain the priority structure of customer needs. The priority ratings of customer needs may be different for different customer segments. k-means cluster method is used to cluster customers according to their main benefits. Prior to adopt the conjoint analysis, Factor analysis is employed to reduce the size of the customer needs portion of HOQ. A case study on domestic refrigerator is presented to illustrate the proposed methodology to establish priority structure of customer needs.al unit, which would significantly improve the business.