WHY ARE SOME OBJECTS MORE APPEALING THAN OTHERS TO CONSUMERS ? DEVELOPMENT OF A MEASUREMENT SCALE OF AESTHETIC STYLE FOR DESIGN PRODUCTS
p.699
The strategic stakes of differentiation are so great for companies that the adequacy between aesthetic perception of the products and functional benefits for consumers must be taken into account (Alba and Williams, 2013; Bloch, 1995; Reimann et al., 2010). In order to examine the consumer's aesthetic perception, we tested an exploratory measurement scale of aesthetic style (Lagier, 2006), which we first validated for different kinds of products. Exploratory and confirmatory analysis of this scale were conducted and obtained results which proved the stability of the scale for design products. The three dimensions of the factor analysis can be interpreted within the conceptual framework of the perception of design products. We effectively find two clearly distinct dimensions which measure: “affective intensity” and “tolerance for ambiguity”. The last dimension is composed of items which fall both in the domain of “cognitive differentiation” and “cognitive discrimination”. To segment our sample and quantify the different profiles of aesthetic style, eight groups of consumers were formed from the scores on the three dimensions. Finally, the structure of aesthetic style on consumer preference for four design objects was also tested. We seek to show that our scale can also explain the choice for some objects. A one-way ANOVA was conducted to determine whether there were significant differences in preference for each object based on intensity scores of affective intensity, cognitive discrimination/differentiation and tolerance for ambiguity. Our measurement scale of aesthetic style, in the context of this test, explained consumer preference for some design objects.