A study on bicycle appearance preference by using FCE and FAHP

Abstract The appearance of a component usually affects on the overall image of a product and consequently affects on buyers' preference and purchase intention for the product. An evaluation model is proposed in this study by adopting Morphological Analysis to extract the characteristics of products' appearance, and employing Fuzzy Comprehensive Evaluation (FCE) based on a prior analysis established by Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process (FAHP) to obtain consumers' emphasis on each evaluation item. The resulting weights indicating the emphasis by consumers are then analyzed to determine a more objective view of the overall preference for the product appearance. The bicycle design is taken as an example to verify the feasibility of the proposed evaluation model. This evaluation model is applicable to products whose appearance is composed of various components, and subsequent researchers or designers may apply this method to a variety of design cases. Relevance to industry The assessment model proposed by this article could correct average designers' problem of judging whether the consumers like or not by the product as a whole, while neglecting the influence of degree of preference for the styling features or parts. With this assessment model, order-placing companies could find out and know the preference trend of consumers and avoid procuring too many goods which may result in hoarding.

[1]  A. Petroni,et al.  From Traditional Purchasing to Supplier Management: A Fuzzy Logic-based Approach to Supplier Selection , 2002 .

[2]  Ming-Chuen Chuang,et al.  Expressing the expected product images in product design of micro-electronic products , 2001 .

[3]  F. Liu,et al.  The voting analytic hierarchy process method for selecting supplier , 2005 .

[4]  Shih-Wen Hsiao,et al.  Product-form design model based on genetic algorithms , 2010 .

[5]  Pekka Korvenmaa,et al.  A preliminary study of perceptual matching for the evaluation of beverage bottle design , 2012 .

[6]  D. Chang.  Applications of the extent analysis method on fuzzy AHP , 1996 .

[7]  Shih-Wen Hsiao,et al.  Applying the semantic transformation method to product form design , 1998 .

[8]  J. Cheng,et al.  Fuzzy synthetic decision-making system in ferrographic analysis , 1998 .

[9]  Jun-Chieh Wu,et al.  The underlying factors dominating categorical perception of product form of mobile phones , 2009 .

[10]  Abdelaziz Bouras,et al.  Morphological analysis for product design , 2000, Comput. Aided Des..

[11]  Mao-Jiun J. Wang,et al.  The development of sizing systems for Taiwanese elementary-and high-school students , 2007 .

[12]  Ching-Hsue Cheng,et al.  Evaluating weapon system using fuzzy analytic hierarchy process based on entropy weight , 1994, Proceedings of 1995 IEEE International Conference on Fuzzy Systems..

[13]  T. Saaty,et al.  The Analytic Hierarchy Process , 1985 .

[14]  Lotfi A. Zadeh,et al.  Fuzzy Sets , 1996, Inf. Control..

[15]  W. Pedrycz,et al.  A fuzzy extension of Saaty's priority theory , 1983 .

[16]  Petra Willquist,et al.  Identifying and analysing hazards in manufacturing industry—a review of selected methods and development of a framework for method applicability , 2003 .

[17]  Tzu-Hua Huang,et al.  Applying Kansei engineering to industrial machinery trade show booth design , 2011 .

[18]  Nigel Cross,et al.  Engineering design methods , 1989 .

[19]  Shih-Wen Hsiao,et al.  A semantic and shape grammar based approach for product design , 1997 .

[20]  J. Buckley,et al.  Fuzzy hierarchical analysis , 1999, FUZZ-IEEE'99. 1999 IEEE International Fuzzy Systems. Conference Proceedings (Cat. No.99CH36315).

[21]  Shih-Wen Hsiao,et al.  Fuzzy logic based decision model for product design , 1998 .

[22]  Shih-Wen Hsiao.  A systematic method for color planning in product design , 1995 .

[23]  Lotfi A. Zadeh,et al.  The Concepts of a Linguistic Variable and its Application to Approximate Reasoning , 1975 .