Customer feedback before market release: a case study

This paper designs a method to collect the technical information that is vital for product improvement actions before market release. The basic idea is to avoid loss of information and waste of time in the following ways: Use a direct information exchange between the customer and the development department. Start a consumer test as soon as a pilot series of products has been manufactured. Choose the customers that participate in the test in such a way that the most relevant product problems, reliability problems as well as lack of satisfiers, are most likely detected in a sufficiently short amount of calendar time. First, considerable attention is given to the design of a customer test; second, the ideas are demonstrated through a consumer test for an innovative consumer product. The results prove that the proposed consumer test is potentially able to detect usability and technical problems early enough to improve the product before the market launch