5. Research Methodology
6.5. Discussion
This study set out to identify the sources of customer data used in automotive NPD (and to ensure that this research selected representative methods used by the automotive industry to further investigate in this thesis. Prior to this study, a series of challenges were identified from the literature which could face an automotive OEM regarding the involvement of customers into the NPD process (Chapter 2).This study allowed an automotive OEM to raise issues regarding the usage of customer research data in general and did not focus on a particular approach. This allowed many issues facing customer data to be raised. It was also important to carry out this study in order to understand if any existing initiatives had been carried out by an automotive OEM when investigating structured evaluations and market research. First the discussion will examine insights expressed by the automotive employees which could help to further understand customers.
How to Further Understand Customers?
Attendees initially expressed interests to further understand driver behaviour and customer lifestyles as it was believed that these insights would provide an enhanced perception of customers, which was currently missing from available data sources. Additional areas of interest included to further understand the impact of competitor products on customers’ understanding of vehicle attributes and to understand customer language to describe attributes.
The expressed areas of interest could potentially provide deeper insights of customers however, practicality and feasibility were not considered during the initial session. Therefore, not all of the responses may be viable or practical. Additionally, during the opening session of the study, attendees may have raised interests and concepts without being aware of existing data sources which may provide the expressed interests. Interestingly, the responses related to surveys did not receive as much attention as the other themes identified in Session 1, which is surprising considering it is one of the methods to capture the opinions of customers.
Available Customer Data
When examining the available data sources, internal data sources received the highest frequency of responses. The second most populated set of responses were identified as market research data. This suggests that the attendees could be familiar with market research sources through their usage and are also aware of the importance of achieving favourable market research data. After identifying the sources of data available, attendees may have been able to better link the sources identified in Session 1. Attendees were therefore given another opportunity in Session 4 to identify any new data which they felt needed to be collected.
Data Which Could Provide Further Value to OEMs
The attendees were given another opportunity to express insights from customers Another difference in Session 4 compared to the 1stsession was that attendees could suggest new types of data which could enhance their perceptions of customers without adding to the overabundance of data sources which were found in Session 2. Therefore the responses
observed in Table 6.2 are suggested to be more practical and viable to further research in this thesis. Responses were categorised into the following groups:
Customer Decision-Making – Responses were categorised as decision-making as insights expressed by the OEM attendees showed the need to identify and understand the implicit opinions and spontaneous reactions from real customers. Examining customer decision-making could therefore provide designers and engineers with enhanced customer perceptions data. Other responses which were categorised here also shared the theme of understanding beyond the responses captured, e.g., to get an insight of customers in their own language and to further understand what would exceed owner expectations. One practical and feasible way to achieve these insights is by using Verbal Protocols to examine the decision-making processes of customers (Chapter 3).
Customer Lifestyle – Understanding the customer lifestyle was regarded to be important to further enhance the understanding of customer data. It was a theme identified broadly in Session 1 and again in the final sessions. However, the responses in this category were very broad and did not provide a practical way to further understand customer lifestyle data and needs further research to define aspects of customers lifestyle which would add value to understanding customers which could be carried out through ethnographic approaches.
Driving Behaviour – Driving behaviour in this broader category relates to understanding more about how the vehicle is being used with a particular focus on how customers drive vehicles and use features.
Customer Trends– As vehicles take anywhere between 24 and 36 months to plan and manufacture (Spall and Ahn, 2000), the attendees felt that understanding customer trends would be beneficial to examine.
Customer Orientation
The results from this study share characteristics with Customer-Orientation studies from the available literature. Customer-Orientation is the process of directing an organisation or employees focus of attention towards customer related issues and understanding customer contributions towards a business (Lengnick-Hall, 1996). This orientation can be delivered through Customer Relationship Management (CRM) (Chen and Popvich, 2003) initiatives which Baran et al. (2008) describe are based on understanding:
i) The customer’s interaction with the company.
ii) The human factor involved and organisational changes needed. iii) The technology needed for the change.
The findings from this chapter add to the existing understanding by identifying the important aspects of customers which are important to organisations who wish to become focussed on customers, e.g., understanding implicit opinions, customer lifestyle driver behaviour and customer trends.
The results in this study create a further discussion where Meyer and Schwager (2007) suggest decision-makers within an organisation may believe customer satisfaction is sufficient to understand the customer but may fail to appreciate that customer experience of the product should also be investigated. Having identified areas that are of interest to the automotive OEM, it is suggested that investigating the decision-making criteria customers use can provide answers to many of the insights which were raised.
Comments on Data Collection Method
The study adopted the Affinity Diagramming method in order to encourage all attendees to make a contribution and to feel comfortable with sharing their opinions as it may be difficult for those within an industry to collaborate with other institutions particularly with sharing company information. This can be advantageous and reduce the role of experimenter bias in the study. One of the drawbacks which come with the richness of data captured is the intensive process of analysis and degree of interpretations which can be drawn from the results and through
qualitative data analysis transcriptions in general. Chapter 5 presented a framework to maintain the validity and reliability of interpretations derived from qualitative data.
6.6. Summary
This study has provided a perspective from industry which confirmed that existing customer research needs to be further understood in order to provide an in-depth perspective of customers. This could aid data interpretation for experts working in automotive OEM management.
This study identified practical insights that could further enhance the automotive OEMs perspectives of their customers through existing vehicle evaluations. It also confirmed the initial need to understand the decision-making processes customers experience in evaluations which could be achieved through a psychological perspective. This potentially could provide a solution in generating an in-depth understanding of the information customers use to evaluate vehicle
features and to determine the influence of methods on the vehicle attribute evaluation procedure.
Sources of customer data available to an automotive OEM were also identified in this study. This study identified potential methods that could be used as the basis for identifying decision- making criteria customers experience in evaluation settings which can be carried out in a representative manner. The study has indicated the need for insights beyond direct quantitative measurements, particularly when interpreting the subjectivity of assessor's responses to SQ.
Understanding the decision-making criteria customers experience in each of the evaluations can provide designers and engineers in NPD with answers to many of the expressed insights identified in this study. Additionally, the need for an improved data structure to allow teams within the OEM to be aware of the sources of data to allow easier access was identified. Furthermore, a literature review of vehicle SQ in Chapter 4, identified that assessing customer decision-making in SQ subjective evaluations provides an opportunity to make a significant contribution to knowledge by comparing structured evaluations with market research approaches.