Products' Shared Visual Features Do Not Cancel in Consumer Decisions

Abstract

Consumers' product purchase decisions typically involve comparing competing products' visual features and functional attributes. Companies strive for “product differentiationâ€‌ (Liu et al., 2013, “Product Family Design Through OntologyBased Faceted Component Analysis, Selection, and Optimization,â€‌ ASME J. Mech. Des., 135(8), p. 081007; Thevenot and Simpson, 2009, “A Product DissectionBased Methodology to Benchmark Product Family Design Alternatives,â€‌ ASME J. Mech. Des., 131(4), p. 041002; Kota et al., 2000, “A Metric for Evaluating Design Commonality in Product Families,â€‌ ASME J. Mech. Des., 122(4), pp. 403–410; Orfi et al. 2011, “Harnessing Product Complexity: Step 1—Establishing Product Complexity Dimensions and Indicators,â€‌ Eng. Econ., 56(1), pp. 59–79; and Shooter et al. 2005, “Toward a MultiAgent Information Management Infrastructure for Product Family Planning and Mass Customisation,â€‌ Int. J. Mass Customisation, 1(1), pp. 134–155), which makes consumers' product comparisons fruitful but also sometimes challenging. Psychologists who study decisionmaking have created models of choice such as the cancellationandfocus (C&F) model. C&F explains and predicts how people decide between choice alternatives with both shared and unique attributes: The shared attributes are “canceledâ€‌ (ignored) while the unique ones have greater weight in decisions. However, this behavior has only been tested with text descriptions of choice alternatives. To be useful to designers, C&F must be tested with product visuals. This study tests C&F under six conditions defined by: The representation mode (textonly, imageonly, and imagewithtext) and presentation (sequentially or sidebyside) of choice alternatives. For the products tested, C&F holds for only limited situations. Survey and eyetracking data suggest different cognitive responses to shared text attributes versus shared image features: In textonly, an attribute's repetition cancels its importance in decisions, while in images, repetition of a feature reinforces its importance. Generally, product differences prove to attract more attention than commonalities, demonstrating product differentiation's importance in forming consumer preferences.