The improvement of kansei engineering by using the repertory grid technique

Abstract

A customer-oriented approach to product development with particular consideration of emotions is represented by Kansei Engineering. Developed by Mitsuo Nagamachi, Kansei Engineering is characterized by the possibility to capture customer perceptions and to translate them into product features. In order to assess these perceptions, a semantic space is generated. For this purpose it is necessary to identify Kansei words that are gathered up through research in marketing concepts, scientific journals and service reports. This procedure though displays the disadvantage of not being able to identify all emotions referring to the investigated product. One way to improve the identification of Kansei words is Repertory Grid. The Repertory Grid technique makes it possible to gather unaltered perceptions through in-depth interviews from the direct interaction with customers. Thus, the interview phase of the Repertory Grid technique offers an improved approach to identify of Kansei words.