Integrating Kansei engineering with conjoint analysis to fulfil market segmentation and product customisation for digital cameras

Abstract

Diverse customer desires coupled with technological advances have forced companies to manufacture products with ultimate performance, low cost, high quality and much shorter time-to-market. Recently, the popularity of smart phones has given rise to seriously declined product sales of digital cameras. In this paper, a two-phase framework is presented to offer decision supports on developing next-generation cameras. In the phase of market segmentation, Kansei engineering is employed to capture customer perceptions of affective features. Then, rough set theory is conducted to generate decision rules for partitioning the whole market into the consumer segment and the professional segment, respectively. In the phase of product customisation, conjoint analysis is applied to extract customer preferences for functional features. Furthermore, Grey relational analysis is conducted to select the top three varieties with regard to two distinct segments. In particular, this paper is capable to help brand companies or camera manufacturers better capture customer perceptions and preferences for digital cameras, effectively perform market segmentation (based on affective features) and efficiently conduct product customisation (based on functional features).