A preliminary study of perceptual matching for the evaluation of beverage bottle design

In today's increasingly competitive marketplace, designers and manufacturers are extremely concerned with the perceived qualities of their products. In this study, perceptual matching, which is generally used to describe the strength of the correlation between a phenomenon and the human response it elicits, was used as a measurement criterion to examine whether a product design gives consumers an accurate image and arouses their visual and affective perceptions according to the designers' expectations.A two stage integrated perceptual matching procedure was used to evaluate 60 beverage bottle designs. This procedure features a classification task and a semantic differential (SD) experiment to acquire the subjects' perceptions of stimuli and match accuracy analysis and correlation analysis to measure perceived qualities.As a result, a sequence of design samples was identified with respect to their matching quality. Based on further morphological analysis, the reasons that some designs succeeded and others failed were investigated. Accordingly, a list of design rules for beverage bottles from each category was created. Several methods are also suggested to help enhance matching quality, including (1) symbolic design features, (2) a mapping model of feelings and design features and (3) branding strategy, which can support designers and manufacturers in tangible product development.Relevance to industryPerceptual matching, as proposed in this study, is applied as an evaluation procedure that can be readily implemented by businesses to measure consumers' perceived qualities of a product. The knowledge gained from this approach is beneficial in assisting design work and optimizing production strategies. Additionally, the identification of the matching relationship between product design and perception is beneficial for designers and manufacturers to better understand consumers' demands.

► We employ perceptual matching to describe beverage bottle design quality.
► We separate the evaluation procedure into visual matching and affective matching.
► 60 samples are evaluated and investigated why some ones succeed and others fail.
► Design rules for various categories of beverage bottles are created.
► Helpful methods are suggested for enhancing the matching quality for beverage industry.