Probing cultural differences in product design and consumer evaluation using repertory grid analysis

Tang, Pinyan, Lawson, Glyn, Sun, Xu and Sharples, Sarah (2021) Probing cultural differences in product design and consumer evaluation using repertory grid analysis. International Journal of Technology and Design Education . ISSN 0957-7572

[img]
Preview
PDF - Requires a PDF viewer such as GSview, Xpdf or Adobe Acrobat Reader
Available under Licence Creative Commons Attribution.
Download (1MB) | Preview

Abstract

Culture plays an essential role in the success of product design, especially in the age of a global economy where there is a high probability of discrepancy between the designer's intention and the consumer's response. However, the role of culture is often challenging to identify and measure. In the current paper, we employed Repertory Grids (RG) to investigate differences in UK and Chinese participants' evaluations of designs, which were themselves from both UK and Chinese students. The techniques of Honey's Content Analysis (HCA) and Principal Components Analysis (PCA) were applied to integrate the analysis of both the collected qualitative and quantitative data. The results show that the two groups tended to focus on a similar range of design aspects (i.e. aesthetics, form/shape, usability, creativity, and functionality), but apply different criteria in evaluating such aspects.The UK and Chinese designs were found to be distinctive from each other and tended to appeal more to the people from the same cultural background. The findings reveal the interplay between culture and design and underline the importance of integrating culture into design education.

Item Type: Article
Keywords: product design; consumer evaluation; culture; repertory grid; cross-cultural comparison
Schools/Departments: University of Nottingham Ningbo China > Faculty of Science and Engineering > Department of Mechanical, Materials and Manufacturing Engineering
Identification Number: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10798-021-09663-9
Depositing User: QIU, Lulu
Date Deposited: 04 Jun 2021 07:00
Last Modified: 04 Jun 2021 07:00
URI: https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/id/eprint/65360

Actions (Archive Staff Only)

Edit View Edit View