Improving the house of quality with maximum difference scaling

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to put forth maximum difference scaling to more accurately identify importance scores for customer requirements, which will also allow need‐based segments to be recognized and utilized within the QFD process. Design/methodology/approach – An overview of research methods to explore customer requirements are discussed, followed by survey data analysis of customer requirements which compares and contrasts stated importance ratings to maximum difference scaling results. Findings – The results from this study suggest that maximum difference scaling offers some advantages compared to traditional stated importance ratings, as well as other traditional methods for determining importance ratings. Providing significantly more discriminating power among customer requirements, maximum difference scaling allows researchers to have a more accurate and valid view of the relative importance of customer requirements as well as the ability to form need‐based segments. Research limitations/implications – Limitations of all research methods are discussed, including those limitations of maximum difference scaling. Practical implications – The method put forth in this article provides practitioners with an improved methodology for determining the importance of customer requirements. Originality/value – While maximum difference scaling has been proposed and tested in other fields, this is the first article of maximum difference scaling being applied to a QFD project.