Abstract:
This thesis presents an Action Research project investigating the use of
customers’ perceptions of premium and luxury cars within the premium
automotive industry. The research was sponsored by Jaguar Land Rover
(JLR), a UK-based automotive manufacturer.
An inductive, phenomenological approach was adopted in which JLR’s
Premiumness Research Programme (PRP) was used as a case study to build
an understanding of the consumer’s perception of luxury, to discover how to
communicate this understanding within the business, and to determine how it
could be integrated into the NPD process.
A passive exploratory study was conducted to understand JLR’s PRP work, to
seek new insights about the nature of customer’s reactions when evaluating
luxury and premium cars, and to assess JLR’s approach in conducting the PRP.
An interventionist descriptive study was conducted to probe for deeper insights
into how successful JLR’s research and dissemination process had been within
the company, to establish how the wider NPD community interacted with the
data, and to develop and test new ideas and tools that enhanced the utility and
accessibility of the PRP data.
The research generated 58 Research Observations and 36 individual insights
that challenged conventional wisdom about how the voice of the customer
(VoC) can be captured and used in the NPD process.
JLR’s PRP methodology was revealed as a powerful multi-method technique for
acquiring data about consumers’ expectations of luxury automotive brands and
products, their reactions when evaluating luxury and premium vehicles, and
their emotional satisfaction with features and attributes of luxury and premium
vehicles. Limitations in JLR’s ability to process and operationalise such data
lead to the development of a Premiumness Verbatims Database tool which
enabled the wider NPD community to access the PRP knowledge in a safe and
meaningful way by considering the translation and utility of subjective VoC data.