One of the most important components in choice complexity is the product configuration itself, the mixture of product options that give a product its unique signature. Obviously the typical product orderable options are needed to analyze the complexity of a product, but other more abstract options can offer surprising insights into product and customer behaviors.
A typical car configuration has options such as sedan, V6 engine, automatic, blue, cloth, AM/FM/CD, sunroof. But more abstract items can be recorded along with these to offer more insight. Sales type can be recorded to analyze what types of product configurations sell better in promotional sales events as opposed to normal sales transactions. An attribute to record an extended factory warranty option may provide new ideas for packaging options together with additional warranty services that customers are moving towards.
For a small or large trucking product, a recording application can show interesting trends not seen when examining the entire set. Different customer buying patterns would be found for rental, landscaping, beverage and construction applications.
A further extension of this practice would be to record attributes such as product recall or product updates needed. With these attributes you can now look at configurations of products that have a higher instance of quality-related issues and provide this data as feedback into product planning and production. Continued use of these quality-related trends and patterns can be used to monitor overall product quality.
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