Honda uses SAS Customer Intelligence to predict customer preferences

Honda R&D Europe has chosen SAS, the leader in business analytics, and its partner Value Lab to help analyse customer preferences in the European market. This intelligence will be used to help design innovative new motorcycles that meet the needs of the market while still complying with the safety, quality and reliability that have always distinguished the Honda brand.

"We have collected a large amount of research data over the years that isn't just quantitative (such as sales performance and revenue or technical-motor patterns), but also qualitative (such as judgments, values and preferences expressed by customers)," said Daniele Lucchesi, Market and Product Research Manager at Honda R&D Europe.

Using SAS, Honda will integrate all its data in a single environment and analyse it to identify trends. SAS Customer Intelligence can predict, based on the combination of qualitative and quantitative data, the success or the failure of a model.

"We're still in the beginning stages of implementation, but initial results are encouraging,” added Lucchesi. “Data integration is in itself a considerable benefit because it provides fast access to information, regardless of format or system. We've saved time by producing automated reports to submit to headquarters, but the most important value is the ability to interpret data, find correlations and make predictions of what our customers want. We can create new motorcycle designs based on inspirations from the data.”