| description abstract | Consumers' product purchase decisions typically involve comparing competing products' visual features and functional attributes. Companies strive for “product differentiation†(Liu et al., 2013, “Product Family Design Through OntologyBased Faceted Component Analysis, Selection, and Optimization,†ASME J. Mech. Des., 135(8), p. 081007; Thevenot and Simpson, 2009, “A Product DissectionBased Methodology to Benchmark Product Family Design Alternatives,†ASME J. Mech. Des., 131(4), p. 041002; Kota et al., 2000, “A Metric for Evaluating Design Commonality in Product Families,†ASME J. Mech. Des., 122(4), pp. 403–410; Orfi et al. 2011, “Harnessing Product Complexity: Step 1—Establishing Product Complexity Dimensions and Indicators,†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,†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 “canceled†(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. | |
