Customer-focused product development and a case study in Turkish refrigerator market

As product life cycles are getting shorter, new products have to be developed in the shortest time in order to gain advantages against the competitors. Moreover, market requirements defining new features of products should be determined. Companies are continuously seeking for methods to provide their R&D teams with the necessary information about customer requirements. As customer requirements are also an important component of quality as well, embedding the customer expectations into the technical requirements is necessary. From this point of view, Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is presented in the study as a strategic marketing tool for the adaptation of the companies to the dynamic markets for product development. In the study, the methodology is supported with a case study in Turkish refrigerator market. Data gathered from Turkish consumers are used as customer expectations and QFD is used as a tool to convert these expectations to engineering requirements.