Spiegel Institut Speaks at International Forum (TEDA) on Chinese Automotive Industry Development
International Forum (TEDA) on Chinese Automotive Industry Development is a high-level event organized by CATARC (China Automotive Technology & Research Center) and CAAM (China Association of Automobile Manufactures), supported by TEDA (Tianjin Economic-Technological Development Area) and co-organized by VAD (Verband der Automobilindustrie). Due to the pandemic, this year’s China Automotive Consumption Summit of the Forum, a dedicated consumer conference, was held online on March 30, 2021.
The attendees at the conference exchanged their ideas and opinions around the annual theme of "jointly create a new era of quality consumption" and discussed the quality of automotive products and services, automotive consumption characteristics and development trends, consumer demand-oriented product layout, the shaping and upgrading of consumer influence, and the voices of car owners and potential users, etc., to provide suggestions for the realization of quality consumption.
As a strategic partner of CATARC, Spiegel Institut had the great honor to be the only foreign enterprise invited to deliver a speech at the Summit with the topic: Through the Eyes of the User: Automotive Trends in Europe – Consumer Perception and Customer Experience.
Ms. Beate Irmer, our managing director first greeted fellow colleagues in China and introduced our company philosophy of “user-centered development” since the foundation 70 years ago, as well as our service scope around consumer research and UX consulting. This year Spiegel Institut has been ranked by FOCUS as a Top Consultant in automotive branch, which also reflects the high acceptance of consumer-oriented product development in market research.
The speech was then continued by Ms. Julia Messerschmidt, our senior consultant who described the automotive trends in Europe. The market has witnessed more and more OEMs engaged in the user-centered development in the past 20 years. The voices from customers and users are integrated into more and more departments of the car manufacturers to solve the problems engineers, programmers and designers come across. It is most important that these voices are heard more early during the development process. Nowadays, usability tests with potential users have become very mature at different product or service developing stages, also in different departments. Ms. Messerschmidt also went deep into some hot topics like intelligent in-car agent, automated driving, virtual reality, mobility services and alternative drives. The research projects conducted by Spiegel Institut in the past years in these fields have revealed the new requirements and expectations of European consumers.
At the end of the speech Ms. Irmer welcomed enterprises who have the intention to enter the European market to carry out field investigation locally, learning and getting to know the European environment like public transportation or mobility services, etc., putting themselves in the position of European customers or users and experiencing the daily life in person. Products or services oriented to European customers’ requirements can only be designed and developed by collecting first-hand materials and observing the target group closely. Spiegel Institut is more than happy to support this kind of guided experience tour in Europe. The speech ended with Ms. Irmer’s best wishes for a complete success of the Automotive Consumption Summit and hope for meeting fellow colleagues in the near future in either Germany or China.
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