Trends in Consumer Preferences for Product Customization and their Application in Product Design

Abstract Consumer preferences play an important role in the decision to customize a product. The collection of consumer preferences can be a challenging task and most methods require significant effort while only focusing on one specific product or product type. A popular method of collecting consumer preferences is a survey as it is easy to administer and can be tailored to gather specific desirable information. In this paper, a survey is developed to gather consumer preferences for product customization with a focus on identifying trends amongst these preferences. User preferences are correlated to factors of success in customization and categorical definitions of product attributes. Twenty-five products were evaluated, with one hundred total responses collected. The results show the existence of product clusters that represent trends amongst consumer preferences for customization. The trends and clusters identified have potential applications in the design of novel customized products by using categorical representations to generalize the findings. This method of generalization can provide cost and time savings in the product design cycle for future customized products by reducing the effort required to elicit consumer preferences.