Visually decomposing vehicle images: Exploring the inﬂuence of diﬀerent aesthetic features on consumer perception of brand

Charlie Ranscombe, Ben Hicks, Glen Mullineux and Baljinder Singh, Innovative Design and Manufacturing Research Centre, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Bath, Claverton Down, Bath BA2 7AY, UK

This paper presents a technique to investigate the inﬂuence of aesthetic features and brand recognition of vehicles. Appearance has been shown to impact greatly on consumer perception of products and their branding, yet there exist few tools or methods to support reasoning about their inﬂuence. A procedure for visually decomposing designs into constituent aesthetic features is proposed. The strategy is applied to a range of saloon cars, and a consumer survey undertaken to establish the signiﬁcance and potency of individual aesthetic features. Results both validate the decomposition technique and highlight certain aesthetic features that have the greatest inﬂuence on brand recognition.

Keywords: aesthetics, automotive design, design tools, reasoning, styling

t is known that appearance plays an important role in the successful sale of products (Bloch, 1995; Moulson amp; Sproles, 2000; Page amp; Herr, 2002).

Audi states that up to 60% of a consumerrsquo;s decision to purchase a vehicle is based on styling rather than technical performance (Kreuzbauer amp; Malter, 2005). In the same way that appearance can inﬂuence consumer judgement, so can brand. What is more, perceptions of product brand inﬂuence judgements of quality and overall desirability and are primarily derived from the productrsquo;s appearance (Bloch, 1995; Page amp; Herr, 2002). Consequently, visual aesthetics become an important consideration during the design process. In industries such as automotive, where technological advances are becoming less of a diﬀer- entiator between competing products, the role of visual aesthetics becomes even more crucial to a vehiclersquo;s success in the marketplace (Warell, Stridsman-Dahlstroeuro;m, amp; Fjellner, 2006). This is not to say that quality and technical performance are no longer important factors in the commercial suc-

cess of vehicles, or indeed of any product. There are many examples of prod-

Corresponding author:

Charlie Ranscombe

c.h.ranscombe@bath. ac.uk

ucts failing due to poor quality or performance despite well-executed visual properties. However, the focus of this paper is purely in the consideration of product appearance during the design process.

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doi:10.1016/j.destud.2011.06.006 319

The complex nature of vehicles compared with other mass produced products (such as household products and consumer electronics), along with lengthy de- sign and development times (3e4 years (Thomke, 2001)), mean they require considerable investment from manufacturers. With this investment comes con- siderable ﬁnancial risk relating to the success or failure of vehicles when launched onto the market. Thus, during the design and development process

there is great pressure on designers and managers to make correct and well in- formed judgements. While in many design problems there are methods and strategies that can help designers to evaluate designs and make informed judgements (Lockamy amp; Khurana, 1995; Ulrich amp; Eppinger, 2008), assess- ment of visual impression of a productrsquo;s appearance remains highly subjective and ill deﬁned. Designers and managers concerned with this aspect of vehicle design must rely on previous experience and training and the notion of de- signerrsquo;s intuition when considering visual qualities of design proposals, despite the impact these judgements can make on the vehiclersquo;s market success (Moulson amp; Sproles, 2000).

There is a need to support designers and managers involved in vehicle styl- ing by providing some form of tool to help reasoning about the brand per- ceived to be associated with a designrsquo;s appearance and facilitating an optimal compromise between novel yet recognisable designs. This paper dis- cusses the initial steps towards the creation of such a tool by demonstrating a procedure for visually decomposing designs such that the aesthetic fea- tures may be identiﬁed and assessed, and their inﬂuence on brand recogni- tion explored. Section 1 gives background to the process of vehicle design and the role of aesthetics and branding in a productrsquo;s design. Section 2 includes a review of previous work that has used visual decomposition in order to explore constituent parts of visual material. The decomposition strategy adopted for the current study is also set out and discussed in Section 3 and the methodology for implementing and testing the decompo- sition strategy is described in Section 4. Results are presented and discussed (Section 5) and conclusions drawn in Section 6.

Background

This section presents the background to the subject of appearance in vehicle design and considerations of brand management during the design process. In discussing research into the design process and the way designers work,

探讨不同审美特征对消费者品牌感知的影响

摘要

本文提出了一种研究汽车美学特征和品牌识别影响的方法。外观已经被证明对消费者对产品的认知和品牌有很大的影响，但是很少有工具或方法支持关于其影响的推理。提出了一种将设计从视觉上分解为美学特征的方法。该策略应用于一系列轿车，并对消费者进行调查，以确定个人审美特征的重要性和潜力。结果验证了分解技术，突出了对品牌识别影响最大的审美特征。2011年爱思唯尔有限公司版权所有:汽车图像分解:探索不同审美特征对消费者品牌感知的影响。

关键词:美学；汽车设计；设计工具；推理；造型

引言

众所周知，外观在产品的成功销售中起着重要的作用(Bloch, 1995;molson amp; Sproles, 2000;Page amp; Herr, 2002)。奥迪指出，高达60%的消费者购买汽车的决定是基于造型而不是技术性能(Kreuzbauer amp; Malter, 2005)。就像外表可以影响消费者的判断一样，品牌也可以。此外，对产品品牌影响的感知主要来自产品的外观(Bloch, 1995;Page amp; Herr, 2002)。因此，视觉美学成为设计过程中一个重要的考虑因素。在汽车等行业，技术进步对竞争产品之间的差别越来越小，视觉美学的作用对汽车在市场上的成功变得更加重要(Warell, Stridsman-Dahlstrom， amp; Fjellner, 2006欧元)。这并不是说质量和技术性能不再是汽车或任何产品取得商业成功的重要因素。尽管执行良好的视觉特性，但仍有许多产品由于质量或性能差而失败的例子。然而，本文的重点仅仅是在设计过程中对产品外观的考虑。

与其他大规模生产的产品(如家用产品和消费电子产品)相比，汽车的复杂性，加上漫长的设计和开发时间(3e4年(Thomke, 2001))，意味着它们需要来自制造商的大量投资。这一投资带来了相当大的金融风险，关系到汽车上市时的成败。因此，在设计和开发过程中，设计师和管理者面临着巨大的压力，他们必须做出正确而明智的判断。而在许多设计问题中，有一些方法和策略可以帮助设计师评估设计并做出明智的判断(Lockamy amp; Khurana, 1995;Ulrich amp; Eppinger, 2008)，对产品外观的视觉印象的评估仍然是高度主观和不明确的。尽管这些判断会对汽车的市场成功产生影响，但在考虑设计方案的视觉质量时，关注汽车设计这一方面的设计师和管理者必须依靠以往的经验和培训，以及设计师的直觉概念(Moulson amp; Sproles, 2000)。有必要通过提供某种形式的工具来帮助设计师和管理人员对与设计外观相关的品牌进行推理，并促进新颖但可识别的设计之间的最佳折衷，从而支持参与车辆造型的设计师和管理人员。本文讨论了创建这样一个工具的最初步骤，通过演示一个可视化分解设计的过程，这样可以识别和评估美学特征，并探索它们对品牌识别的影响。第一部分介绍了汽车设计过程的背景，以及美学和品牌在产品设计中的作用。第2节回顾了以前使用视觉分解的工作，以便探索视觉材料的组成部分。本研究采用的分解策略在第3节中进行了阐述和讨论，第4节描述了实施和测试分解策略的方法。结果在第5节中给出并讨论，结论在第6节中得出。