Perceived quality of products: a framework and attributes ranking method
Journal article, 2020

Perceived quality is one of the most critical aspects of product development that defines the successful design. This paper presents a new approach to perceived quality assessment by examining its elements, decomposed into a structure with the bottom-up sensory approach from the level of basic (‘ground’) attributes, covering almost every aspect of quality perception from the engineering viewpoint. The paper proposes a novel method for perceived quality attributes relative importance ranking, resulting in the balanced perceived quality of the final product within the given conditions. The proposed method helps to reach the equilibrium of the product’s quality equation from the perspective of design effort, time, and costs estimations. The authors introduce the Perceived Quality Framework (PQF), which is the taxonomy system for perceived quality attributes and the core of the attributes importance ranking (PQAIR) method. The research outcomes are based on findings of the qualitative exploratory study, including European and North American premium and luxury automotive manufacturers. An empirical structural validity test was performed to assess the usability and rigour of the proposed method. The results indicate that perceived quality evaluation can be significantly improved during all stages of product development.

industrial design engineering

Perceived quality

product quality

product development

aesthetics

Author

Kostas Stylidis

Chalmers, Industrial and Materials Science, Product Development

Casper Wickman

Chalmers, Industrial and Materials Science, Product Development

Rikard Söderberg

Chalmers, Industrial and Materials Science

Journal of Engineering Design

0954-4828 (ISSN) 1466-1837 (eISSN)

Vol. 31 1 37-67

Digital Twin for Geometry Assured Production

VINNOVA (2017-05220), 2018-01-01 -- 2019-12-31.

Subject Categories

Mechanical Engineering

Production Engineering, Human Work Science and Ergonomics

Other Mechanical Engineering

Other Engineering and Technologies not elsewhere specified

Vehicle Engineering

Areas of Advance

Production

DOI

10.1080/09544828.2019.1669769

More information

Latest update

4/27/2020