Product appraisal dimensions impact emotional responses and visual acceptability of instrument panels

The way designers deal with emotions could be an important source of differentiation in highly competitive markets like the car industry. Indeed, technological improvements and safety constraints have leveled off the perceived differences between cars. Recently, several studies have shown strong correlations between overall product satisfaction and product-elicited emotions. Other studies have documented relationships between evaluative criteria supporting product evaluation, satisfaction and emotions. How to integrate emotions when designing a car is still a broad field of investigation and raises various questions. For instance, in the early phases of product development, prototypes are often non-functional, so assessors cannot use them. Therefore, satisfaction as a global product judgment cannot be evaluated. Moreover, a car is composed of multiple elements corresponding to the division of the design process whereas the consumer's emotional responses come from a global car appraisal. The purpose of our study is to test the relationships between product attributes, emotions and visual acceptability in focusing on a subpart of the car. The responses of a hundred consumers to eighteen instrument panel pictures were analyzed. Affective data were collected using the two first dimensions pleasure and arousal of the PAD scale. Product appraisal was measured using thirteen bipolar scales developed during preliminary tests with eight assessors. It was found that consumers were able to differentiate between instrument panel pictures based on visual acceptability, emotions and appraisal dimensions. Hierarchical Cluster Analysis performed on the liking scores yielded three subgroups of consumers. Pleasure was strongly correlated with visual acceptability for the population and for each cluster of consumers. The correlations between the arousal and the appraisal dimensions highlighted that arousal may have different meanings for the clusters of consumers. Moreover, the arousal seemed to have a negative meaning on average for the French consumers we interviewed. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved