Product appearance is important for the success of the product in the market. It leads to brand affiliation, which can induce the user to make a purchase decision. Visual brand affiliation can be achieved through similarities in structure, shape, color (and texture) and graphics. In this paper, the shape is discussed.

Current research on brand affiliation based on shapes primarily considers the contours of selected elements from selected views. To what extent different surfaces and surface transitions (e.g. curved and angular) affect the brand affiliation of products has not been investigated so far. This relationship between surface design and brand affiliation has been studied in this paper using the example of the vehicle front.

So far, brand affiliation has mainly been analyzed with contours (orientation, proportions and position) of headlights, grill, lower air intake and other elements. In order to use different types of contours in a brand-neutral way, the anthropometric design of the vehicle front was used as a basis. This allows vehicles to appear friendly, non-aggressive and feminine (or unfriendly, aggressive and masculine) through smiling and frowning faces. The same semantic effects were also investigated with regard to the surface design. The effects were achieved by curved or angular surfaces. However, the correlation has not yet been studied on the vehicle.

According to these parameters, vehicle fronts of a sedan with smiling and grimacing faces and curved and angular surfaces were created. In order to be neutral with regard to existing brands, new stimulus patterns were developed in 3D-CAD. In an online survey with 150 participants, first the semantic effects (friendliness, aggressiveness and perceived gender) of the individual vehicle fronts were examined. The results (two-way rmANOVA) confirmed previous research on the semantic effect of surfaces and the anthropometric vehicle front.  In addition, the semantic effect of the surfaces was also verified by the product example of the vehicle. Subsequently, the same participants evaluated the vehicle fronts in pairs to determine whether they could imagine if the vehicles belonged to one brand or to different brands. Two vehicles with different faces and simultaneously different surfaces were assigned to different brands compared to vehicles with an identical feature (same face or same surface). In the case of vehicles with an identical feature, the mentions concerning one brand and different brands were distributed bimodal. Two groups of participants could be identified using a cluster analysis. One group rather assigned identical faces, smiling faces, round surfaces or all vehicle pairs to one brand. The other group, on the contrary, assigned rather equal surfaces, frowning faces, angular surfaces or no vehicle pairings to a brand. This proved that brand affiliation could also be achieved through different surfaces on vehicles. In the following, it should be considered to what extent the results are related to different brand levels (e.g. historical: follow-up models, product portfolio: models sold at the same time). Furthermore, the effect should also be tested with other products. It is also interesting to what extent the different semantic effects affect brand affiliation.


Brand Affiliation Through Curved and Angular Surfaces Using the Example of the Vehicle Front

Division / Sponsors: 
Design Engineering Division and Computers & Information In Engineering Division


Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/IDETC-CIE/IDETC-CIE2020/volume/83907

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