THE REJECTIONS
The claims stand rejected as follows: claims 1-4, 6-8, 13-15, 17-21, 26 and 27
under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) as anticipated by Cooper; claims 28-30 and 33 under 35
U.S.C. § 103 as obvious over Cooper in view of Eisner; and claim 31 under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103 as obvious over Cooper in view of Eisner and McCarthy.
OPINION
We reverse the aforementioned rejections. We need to address only the
independent claims, i.e., claims 1, 13 and 28. Each of the independent claims requires
a method of developing a brand profile for a new product, and claims 13 and 28 further
require that the new product is an automobile. The independent claims all require
grouping product attributes in response to customer-oriented market research, placing
each of the attributes in an attribute class corresponding to brand personality
importance, generating a preferred product brand position as a function of the product
attributes, and generating target product characteristics as a function of the classified
product attributes and the preferred product brand position, wherein the target product
characteristics represent customer-driven objectives for each of a plurality of product
attributes to be incorporated into the new product.
Cooper discloses a model that maps competitive market structures by using
switching probabilities and attribute ratings to identify the preference structure of each
consumer segment (abstract). Cooper points out that when consumers consider
choices among a competitive group of automobiles, a consumer considering an
3
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007