Evaluating Customer Perceptions of Car Seats' Functions Using the Kano Model

Purpose: Car seats affect customer satisfaction greatly when the seats' design is changed because car holders are in close contact with the seats. However, the improvement of the current seats' design involves risks such as investment cost, and therefore it needs strategic operating measures from the perspective of customers. Until now, operations of seats’ specification have been decided by technical-push rather than market-pull, and carried out based on professionals’ experience without measuring customer satisfaction correctly. The purpose of this study is to present a systematic approach to measure customers' perception on the car seats using the Kano model and pairwise comparison technique.Methods: The authors derive 17 major functions of a car seat by analyzing major components of car seats, and conduct a survey of 141 adults who hold a car(s).Results: The results show that consumers perceive the adjustable functions of front seats as must-be while the same functions for rear seats are perceived as attractive. In particular, motor operated functions for both front and rear seats increase customer satisfaction greatly if they are presented.Conclusion: This study shows that how much customer (dis)satisfaction will increase if a function of car seats (non)fulfilled, and therefore, the results of this study will provide practitioners and R&D personnel in new automobile seats development projects with useful information.Key Words: The Kano Model, Quality Attributes, Car Seats, Customer Satisfaction