What Sensory Desires Make Young Chinese Users Prefer One Instrumental Panel Form of Passenger Car to Another?

Abstract

To investigate into what and how sensory desires affect young Chinese users’ perceiving and liking instrumental panel (IP) form, young users as consumers with age of 25 to 35 are invited to estimate on both similarity of ninety-seven IP samples of passenger car in fifty-five main auto brands in Chinese market, and similarity of meanings of fifty-six image words. The cluster analysis is conducted and ten representative image words, i.e., ‘Layered’, ‘Prospective’, ‘Rough’, ‘Graceful’, ‘Economical’, ‘Exciting’, ‘Delicate’, ‘Dynamic’, ‘Favorite’ and ‘Solemn’, are extracted as representative images. With multidimensional scaling the perceptual map is plotted for qualitative morphological analysis, and sixteen IP forms are generated by orthogonal design and evaluated by users from the perspective of each of ten representative images in turn with semantic differential method. A multivariate linear regression analysis is then completed to examine the relationship between image ‘Favorite’ and other nine representative images. It is found that four sensory images including ‘Exciting’, ‘Graceful’, ‘Delicate’ and ‘Solemn’, in bigger to smaller coefficient order, play significant (P < 0.001) and positive roles in determining the feeling of ‘Favorite’ image, making young Chinese users prefer one IP form of passenger car to another.