Application of dynamic value-attribute modeling in a product family

Product families are used as a solution to cater the needs of diversified user groups, while minimizing the usage of resources. However, today's design decision makers require additional capabilities to manage the uncertainties brought by highly dynamic nature of the technological markets. Therefore, understanding the time varying behavior of preferences, in addition to the preference differences across market segments, has become an essential tool to survive the intense competition. This paper provides a new approach to add time varying behavior of preferences to extend the currently two dimensional market segmentation grids. The newly added time dimension provides more information to the design decision makers, while minimizing uncertainties due to the dynamic market behavior. A precursor case study, using the US light truck market data from 2004-2010 was conducted to assess the dynamic nature of the preferences in the market niches. The case study results provide strong evidences of presence of the time variance preference in market niches. A dynamic preference modeling case study, with an extended set of market segment observations, is proposed as the immediate future work.