A Study on Consumers Emotional Responses and Event-Related Potential Evoked by Product Form

  • Wu, Tyan-Yu (PI)

Project: National Science and Technology CouncilNational Science and Technology Council Academic Grants

Project Details

Abstract

Followed the increasing of living standard, consumers expect to have a batter quality of lives. Nowadays, consumers require a product having not only functional satisfaction, but also emotional attraction. Products have to play a role of pleasing users when using them. In other words, consumers are looking for emotional and symbolic satisfaction, after they have been satisfied by the fulfilled of both products appearances and functions. It is therefore aesthetic quality and product content is becoming very important in designing a product. Thus, designers have to pay more attention on consumers’ emotional responses, now. Emotional design is becoming a trend in design currently. Therefore, product emotional research is also turn to a popular issue in product design area. Among them, as a pioneer, Jordan (1996) commented that a pleasurable product has to satisfy users in terms of product functionality and usability, firstly. Then, consumers can have a chance to feel pleasure when using it. Moreover, Jordan (2000) classified pleasurable products into four categories: Physio-Pleasure, Socio- Pleasure, Psycho-Pleasure, Ideo-Pleasure. Cognitive psychologist, Norman (2004) asserted that emotional design is a critical issue in designing a product, which should emphasize users’ emotion responses. He claimed that there are three levels of emotions: Visceral level, Behavioral level, and Reflective level emotions. Both Jordan (2000) and Norman (2004) mentioned both products appearances (i.e. Physio-Pleasure and Visceral level emotion) and meanings (i.e. Socio- Pleasure, Reflective level emotion) are the characteristics of evoking emotions. Thus, in this study, these two emotional characteristics are the main emotional contents which plan to explore the relationship between products and consumers’ emotional responses. Traditional researches in psychology and product emotions, self-report questionnaires were broadly used to assess emotions. Although self-report questionnaire is a very convenience tool to measure emotions, somehow it mainly focuses on subjects subjective feeling measurements. It is lacking of evidence on objective psychological responses measurements. To fulfill this gap, this research attempts to use an objective assessment, Electroencephalography (EEG). Particularly, Event-Related Potential (ERP) method will be used in the assessment during experiment. Along with EEG measurement, PAD emotional scale developed by Mehrabian, & Russell (1974) will be used to assess emotion in the experiment. In sum, this study attempts to conduct an experimental design with ERP method to achieve following goals: (1) to explore the relationship between product appearance and consumers emotional responses. (2) to explore the relationship between product meanings and consumers emotional responses. (3) to explore the relationship between product adjective images and consumers emotional responses. (4) to study the relationship between EEG intensity and consumers emotional responses. (5) to explore the relationship between active brain block and emotion. (6) to identify the relationship between PAD scale and ERP. It is hopefully that the result can assist designers understand consumer emotional responses better and support design activities greatly.

Project IDs

Project ID:PE10107-0952
External Project ID:NSC101-2410-H182-017
StatusFinished
Effective start/end date01/08/1231/07/13

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