(140j) Consumer Preferences and Pricing Models in the Design of Devices

The design of devices, especially those that require chemical engineering expertise, such as coffee makers, refrigerators, etc., will be presented in the form of a multidisciplinary approach.

We consider microeconomics to be an important, if not imperative player in the design of devices. Indeed, microeconomics provides the demand price relationship, which in turn is directly influenced by the consumer preferences for the product. In other words, as the consumer tend to be more satisfied with a particular product (regardless of price), they are also more inclined to pay more for it.

Thus, the core of our methodology is to show that the modification of the product device characteristics needs to be guided by the aforementioned consumer preferences. In addition, maximizing consumer satisfaction may lead to prohibitive costs, so the most profitable product is not necessarily the best one. Our methodology is capable of capturing this relationship: It obtains the optimal one that best contrasts the competition product.

We will illustrate this using the example of high purity oxygen generators for hospitals and individual patients. In this case, several product attributes are of importance, reliability, noise, appearance, flexibility. Improving on each one of this has a cost and therefore a reasonable balance is needed.