Abstract
Behavior observation is effective in understanding latent needs that customers themselves are not aware of. However, its success depends on the skill of the observer. In order to deal with this problem, Sekiya et al. have proposed the limited behavior observation method that makes it easier to find latent needs by narrowing down the behaviors to be observed in advance. In this study, a two-step behavior observation procedure to observe behaviors freely instead of the free-form questionnaire survey was proposed with aiming at further improving the effectiveness of the limited behavior observation method. In addition, this two-step behavior observation procedure was applied to multiple products with different properties and their effectiveness was examined. As a result, it showed that
1) using the two-step behavior observation procedure, the number of types of obtained required quality is 1.4 to 1.6 times higher than that using only the free behavior observation or the limited behavior observation, 2) it was possible to determine whether or not the behaviors limited at the second stage was effective based on such a scale as limited observation efficiency, and 3) the limited behavior observation could reduce the variation by the observer compared to the free behavior observation
