Identifying Product Attributes for Quality Function Deployment : Consumer Perceptions in the Case of Wooden Multi-Storey Houses

• In order to bridge the gap between external consumer value and internal production quality, an understanding of consumers’ needs is vital. Consumers’ needs have to be translated through a firms’ internal value chain to improve production quality. The Means-End Chain approach elicits consumers’ needs in terms of product attributes, which further can be translated into engineering characteristics by using the House of Quality concept as the first step in Quality Function Deployment. Here, the relative importance of the attributes plays an important role for further processing. This paper’ aims at identifying product attributes and their relative importance, as an input into the House of Quality within Quality Function Deployment. This is done in the case of wooden multi-storey houses in Sweden, since there is a documented gap between the external consumer value and the internal production quality. Based on the Means-End Chain approach, the Extended Association Pattern Technique was used for a two stage study to elicit product attributes. Results from 34 interviews and 503 returned questionnaires revealed ten product attributes ranked by importance, to be further translated into engineering characteristics within Quality Function Deployment.

Ämnesord

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Maskinteknik -- Produktionsteknik, arbetsvetenskap och ergonomi (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Mechanical Engineering -- Production Engineering, Human Work Science and Ergonomics (hsv//eng)

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Samhällsbyggnadsteknik -- Byggproduktion (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Civil Engineering -- Construction Management (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Means-End Chain

Extended Association Pattern Technique

Quality Function Deployment

House of Quality

Wooden Multi-Storey Houses

Industrial economy

Industriell ekonomi

Marknadsföring

Marketing

Forestry and Wood Technology

Skog och träteknik

Civil engineering

Byggteknik

Publikations- och innehållstyp

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