Abstract
As customer values become increasingly diverse, automobile exterior design is becoming one of the most critical elements influencing customer purchase behavior for automakers. The author develops a scientific approach to identifying customers' tastes, called Automobile Exterior Design Model (AEDM). To address this issue, the author uses Customer Science Principle aiming to achieve Intelligence Design Concept Method (CS-IDCM) developed elsewhere. AEDM improves the design business process so that implicit knowledge on customer is turned into explicit knowledge. To strengthen automobile exterior design, AEDM contributes to the following: (1) improvement of design business process methods for automobile profile design, (2) creation of automobile profile design using “psychographics” approach methods, and (3) actual studies on automobile profile design, form, and color matching methods. The validity of the proposed model was verified through case studies of the actual application of AEDM.