Methods for Analyzing the Value of Automobiles

Engineers, marketing specialists, and planners responsible for making the numerous cost/benefit trade-offs that arise in the development of a new product need to understand how the attributes of the product generate value to the customer. A recently proposed methodology for benchmarking product value is tested here using five family automobiles competing in the middle product segment. Reasonable agreement is found between value differences estimated from an analysis of demands and prices and those estimated from attribute differences. This finding supports the use of the methodology in forecasting the demands and profits of future products based upon the improvements expected in their attributes.