Cross-Cultural Differences in Consumer Aesthetics Perception

Both marketing scientists and managers claim that product form or design is a major tool that can be used to gain competitive advantage (XE "Oakley, 1990"). Several studies have confirmed that aesthetic products capture consumer attention, effect positive emotional reactions and have a positive effect on quality appearance and perception (XE "Schmitt andSimonson, 1997"). When comparing designs from different cultures, such as for instance cars from Toyota or BMW or fashion designs from Western and Far East designers one gets the impression that consumers (or maybe designers) in different cultures have different aesthetic preferences. Although this observation is far from surprising to managers, designers or every person who ever travelled around the globe, there is almost no research that provides a solid scientific explanation for cultural differences and similarities in consumers` aesthetic perception. These research gaps are surprising, given that it is essential for successfully launching products and brands in international markets to understand consumers` local and global design and aesthetic preferences. The aim of this research project is therefore to shed more light on cultural differences in consumers` design and aesthetic perception. Based on major theoretical findings in experimental aesthetics such as processing fluency and evolutionary psychology as well as from cross-cultural psychology this research will seek for answers which aesthetic rules can be considered as global and which are likely to be influenced by cultural patterns. It is assumed that main dimensions for cultural distinctions such as interdependent/independent self-construal, horizontal/vertical distinction or holistic/analytic thinking style will influence processing fluency and thus the aesthetic judgment of product designs. Yet, there is also likelihood that some aesthetic rules especially those explained by evolutionary psychology are consistent among different cultures. It will further be investigated, how consumers` aesthetic evaluations interact with `adjacent` choice decisions such as status or prestige seeking as well as need for distinctiveness. To empirically test these assumptions three series of experimental studies will be conducted. The first series will focus on the interaction between consumers` aesthetic perception and self-construals as well as the search for optimal distinctiveness. The second series of experiments investigates the interaction between consumer aesthetics and need for status and optimal distinctiveness. Finally, the third series will focus on the interaction between consumer aesthetics and thinking style as well as processing fluency. To provide broad applicability, experiments will be conducted with various product categories - especially status and non-status goods. Besides the above mentioned managerial importance of this project, this research will also produce valuable basic knowledge about cross-cultural consumption and aesthetic perception.