Development of a multi-scale model for customer perceived value of electric vehicles

Abstract

Electric vehicles (EVs) are now widely acknowledged as a potential ideal means of transportation in the near future in terms of environmental protection and oil crisis. The possible success of the future market for EVs is based on how much of EVs’ value can be perceived by their potential customers. Thus, research on customer perceived value (CPV) of EVs can help us, and especially EV manufacturers, understand the main factors contributing to CPV and how to design suitable EVs that can yield higher CPV. This paper first constructs a multi-scale model for the measurement of CPV based on surveys conducted at Shanghai, China. Then, the decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory method is applied to evaluate the importance of every scale and depict the internal relations among different scales on the impact-relations map (IRM). Further, a novel version of the house of quality is created to conduct technical feasibility analysis for the improvement of each scale. Finally, market segmentation for EV industry is proposed and discussed based on the analysis of the IRM, which could be a practical strategy for EV manufacturers to design appealing EVs and deliver the proper value at the right cost to the right people.

Keywords:

• electric vehicles
• customer perceived value
• DEMATEL method
• the house of quality
• market segmentation