Table Of ContentIntegration of Preference Analysis
Methods into Quality Function
Deployment
Samah Abu-Assab
Integration of Preference
Analysis Methods
into Quality Function
Deployment
A Focus on Elderly People
RESEARCH
Samah Abu-Assab
Cottbus, Germany Bernhard Schmidt
Voestalpine Langenhagen, Deutschland
Linz, Österreich
Zugl.: Dissertation Technische Universität Cottbus, 2011
Printed with the support of the German Academic Exchange Service.
ISBN 978-3-8349-3233-4 ISBN 978-3-8349-7075-6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-8349-7075-6
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Title
To the greatest persons I have ever known, to my parents
Foreword
Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is a popular product planning tool which has been
developed to assure that the voice of the customer is not only heard by market research-
ers but all the way throughout the product development process. Up to now, many QFD
approaches have been presented in the literature, all of them have in common that along
a chain of tables and graphs collected customer requirements are consistently trans-
formed into engineering descriptions of new products.
Recently, instead of customer and expert workshops, the usage of more advanced mar-
ket research methods has been proposed for collecting customer requirements: Prefer-
ence measurement methods like conjoint analysis were used to estimate the importance
of assumed customer requirements more reliably and – additionally – for relating them
validly to engineering descriptions (see for early references, e.g., Baier 1998 or Pullman
et al. 2002). Applications of these new methodological combinations have shown a con-
sistent superiority over the traditional QFD approach. They generate concepts for prom-
ising new products more reliably and validly, since the underlying preference structure
of the customers is estimated and modelled more adequately. Sample applications have
been, e.g., the development of electronic devices or sports equipment for young people
or people from 20 up to 40 years of age.
However, if the customers – and consequently the respondents in the market research
part of the approach – are elderly people, the demanding task of a conjoint analysis data
collection step seems to be too sophisticated for the target group. Here, more simple but
nevertheless valid and reliable preference measurement methods are needed. Candidates
could be modifications of the self-explicated preference measurement approach that re-
cently gained considerable attention from the marketing researchers.
The author of this book, Ms. Samah Abu-Assab has developed such new preference
measurement approaches and combined them with QFD. She applied them in many
market research surveys to markets for elderly people (e.g. cell phones or smart homes
for elderly people) and analyzed all through whether the new approaches are superior to
the already known combinations of QFD and conjoint analysis. The results look promis-
ing: the new approaches seem to be adequate for the target group.
Ms. Abu-Assab did an excellent job in developing and testing the new approaches. The
book summarizes this complex research over four years in Germany. The dissertation
was accepted by the Faculty of Mechanical, Electrical, and Industrial Engineering at the
VIII Foreword
Brandenburg University of Technology (BTU) Cottbus in June 2011. We hope that the
book will find a favourable reception by a large, interested audience.
Prof. Dr. Daniel Baier
Acknowledgement
I wrote the presented work during my scholarship in Germany as an internal doctorand
at the department of Marketing and Innovation Management at the Brandenburg Univer-
sity of Technology Cottbus. At the beginning, I was told that writing a dissertation is a
long journey that will turn my life upside down and change many of my perspectives. It
took me a while before I realized that it was true and at the end of this journey, it did.
Succeeding in this journey would not have been possible without the support of many
good people.
I thank the German Academic Exchange Service DAAD for their financial support dur-
ing my graduate time by a 4-year scholarship and for their partial financial support in
printing this book.
I would like to acknowledge the support of my supervisor Prof. Dr. Daniel Baier
throughout my work. I would also like to thank the members of my graduate committee
Prof. Dr. Ralf Woll for accepting to be my second supervisor and Prof. Dr. Magdalena
Mißler-Behr for accepting to take the head of the committee and for her support. Many
thanks also go to Dr. Alexandra Rese for accepting to take the documentation job.
Furthermore, I heartily thank all those who supported me throughout this work. I namely
thank my colleagues Dr. Florenta Costache, Mr. Sergey Polyetayev, Ms. Eleni Vasileia-
dou, and Dr. Said Esber for their support during the whole journey. Many thanks also go
to the student-support that helped me in my projects. My special thanks go to Sarah
Döring, Mirko Kühne, Diego Altamirano, Wahyu Utomo, Philipp Tursch, Hanane Sabil,
Daniel Richter, and Ksenia Mitasova.
In my private circle, I thank all my family and friends for their unconditional support
and their understanding for my commitment to achieve this goal. In Germany, my very
special thanks go to Sabine Otto for her continuous encouragement, motivation, and her
trust. In Jerusalem, my deepest appreciation and thanks go to my parents, Inas, Safa’,
Nabil, and Nadine for the unstoppable support and encouragement in all times and in
achieving my goals.
Samah Abu-Assab
Table of Contents
Foreword ...................................................................................................................... VII
Acknowledgement ......................................................................................................... IX
Table of Contents .......................................................................................................... XI
List of Figures ........................................................................................................... XVII
List of Tables ............................................................................................................... XIX
List of Abbreviations ............................................................................................... XXIII
1 Introduction ............................................................................................................... 1
1.1 The Starting Point .............................................................................................. 1
1.2 Introduction to the Integration of Preference Analysis Methods into QFD ...... 2
1.3 Integration of Preference Analysis Methods into QFD for Elderly People ....... 3
1.4 Goals and Structure of the Work ....................................................................... 5
2 The Target Group: Elderly People ......................................................................... 9
2.1 Overview of Elderly People ............................................................................... 9
2.2 Demographical Development in Germany until 2060 ..................................... 11
2.2.1 Decreasing Birth Rates .......................................................................... 14
2.2.2 Life Expectancy ..................................................................................... 15
2.2.3 Old-Age Dependency Ratio ................................................................... 15
2.2.4 Migration ................................................................................................ 15
2.3 The Socio-Economical Situations for Elderly People in Germany ................. 16
2.3.1 Family and Household Structure ........................................................... 16
2.3.2 Economical and Purchasing Power of the Elderly ....................................
Group in Germany ................................................................................. 17
2.3.3 Health of Elderly People in Germany .................................................... 18
2.3.4 Technology and Elderly People ............................................................. 20
2.4 Market Research Methods and Elderly People ................................................ 21
3 Methods of Preference Measurement ................................................................... 25
3.1 The Compositional Approach: The Self-Explicated Method .......................... 25
XII Table of Contents
3.1.1 Overview of the Self-Explicated Method .............................................. 25
3.1.2 Variants of the Self-Explicated Method ................................................ 26
3.2 The Decompositional Approach: The Conjoint Analysis ................................ 29
3.2.1 Overview of the Conjoint Analysis ........................................................ 30
3.2.2 Variants of Conjoint Analysis ................................................................ 31
3.3 Comparison between Conjoint Analysis and Self-Explicated Methods .......... 37
3.3.1 Advantages and Disadvantages of the ACA and the CC-SE ................. 37
3.3.2 Comparison of Empirical Studies between CA and SE ......................... 41
3.3.3 Assessment of Preference Analysis Results .......................................... 44
4 Quality Function Deployment in New Product Development ............................ 47
4.1 Basics of QFD .................................................................................................. 47
4.1.1 History of QFD ...................................................................................... 47
4.1.2 Definition of QFD .................................................................................. 50
4.1.3 The House of Quality ............................................................................. 51
4.2 Beyond the House of Quality: Various QFD Approaches ............................... 56
4.2.1 The Four-Phase Approach ..................................................................... 56
4.2.2 The Matrix of Matrices .......................................................................... 58
4.2.3 The Comprehensive QFD ...................................................................... 58
4.3 Applications of QFD ........................................................................................ 60
4.4 Advantages and Disadvantages of QFD .......................................................... 60
4.5 Suggested Solutions to Some Problems of QFD ............................................. 62
4.5.1 Integration of QFD with Different Methods .......................................... 62
4.5.2 Integration of Preference Analysis Methods into QFD ......................... 66
5 Integration of Preference Analysis Methods into QFD for Elderly People ...... 69
5.1 Pullman’s ConjointQFD Approach ................................................................. 69
5.1.1 Description of the Approach and Experiment ....................................... 69
5.2 Baier’s ConjointQFD Approach ...................................................................... 74
5.2.1 Description of the Approach and Experiment ....................................... 74
5.3 Proposal of the New Approach CC-SEQFD for “Elderly People” .................. 77
