A method for identifying customer orientations and requirements for product–service systems design

Abstract

For manufacturers, developing product–service systems (PSSs) is getting more important because of the trends of servitisation and creating social value. A PSS is a social system where multiple actors mutually provide products and services. A PSS design, therefore, must take into account various actors as customers. However, existing methods provide an insufficient solution as to how various customers should be handled in an analysis to identify and accommodate various customer preferences and requirements. To tackle this issue, this article proposes a new method of identifying customers’ orientations and requirements for PSS design. The proposed method employs a combination of topic analysis, persona and scenario approaches. The effectiveness of the method is demonstrated with its application to an urban development case. Through the demonstration, its practical benefits are concluded as follows: consistent and logical results of requirement analysis and insights into a new market for manufacturers.

Keywords:

• product–service systems
• customer preference
• clustering
• data mining
• design for service
• machine learning
• big data

Notes

1. In particular, this research referred to a ‘development of support’ approach. Basically, it involves a review-based indication of the need to develop support for improving the existing situation, developing a comprehensive support method and empirically testing the method developed (Blessing and Chakrabarti 2009).