GOALI: A Multidisciplinary Approach to Simultaneous Market Segmentation and Product Family Definition

North Carolina State University, Raleigh NC

Investigators

Abstract

The objective of the GOALI award is to integrate models of customer behavior and product design constraints in a multidisciplinary design framework to simultaneously develop marketing strategies and design families of feature-based products. The relative effectiveness of inferring market segmentation from discrete and continuous representations of variation in customer tastes will be assessed in terms of impact on both solution quality and computational tractability. Information on product design constraints will be used to develop strategies for simplifying the optimization problem formulation. Heuristic multiobjective optimization techniques will be applied to determine both the optimal number of product variants and the configuration of each variant. The uncertainties inherent in new product technology deployment will be accounted for by estimating the likelihood of diverting customers to other variants in the product family - or to competitors' products - when the feature content of the optimal solution is changed. If successful, this research stands to redirect current thinking on optimal market-based product family design. This integrated and context-specific approach offers inherent advantages in balancing breadth of market coverage against operational expenses incurred in engineering and manufacturing a diverse lineup of product variants. This proposed work is particularly relevant to American manufacturing enterprises as they can no longer afford to implement exhaustive strategies to product proliferation. Instead, they must be strategically selective in targeting products to well-defined customer groups with strong motivations for purchase. Additionally, the dissemination of this work through creation, circulation, and ongoing development of a comprehensive library of case study problems will benefit the entire engineering design research community. Collaboration of academic and industrial partners is essential to the project?s success as the complexities encountered through real-world market conditions and design constraints could not otherwise be identified and addressed.