VERBAL VERSUS REALISTIC PICTORIAL REPRESENTATIONS IN CONJOINT-ANALYSIS WITH DESIGN ATTRIBUTES

The current generation of high-powered graphics software offers an eff ective means for presenting product designs. Armed with the right tool s for generating photorealistic representations of alternative designs , product development teams can obtain useful consumer input about pro duct design attributes. However, generating computer-based models carr ies greater costs than producing verbal representations (written, key- word descriptions).(1) If a verbal representation can effectively comm unicate the relevant design and styling attributes, can product develo pers justify the costs associated with generating a computer-based mod el? Marco Vriens, Gerard H Loosschilder, Edward Rosbergen, and Dick R. Wittink highlight a fundamental question in the choice between verbal and pictorial representations(2): Does the type of representation use d affect the nature and the quality of the results that product develo pers obtain? Specifically, does the type of representation used in a s tudy affect the information that the study provides about market segme ntation and the relative importance of different design attributes? An d does the choice of representation type affect a study's reliability and predictive accuracy? To address these questions, the authors condu cted a study with a European subsidiary of a Japanese manufacturer of car stereo equipment. The study involves the selection of product desi gns from those made available by the manufacturer Respondents were ask ed to evaluate both verbal representations and photorealistic pictoria l representations of proposed car stereo designs. Half the respondents evaluated the verbal representations first, while the other half rate d the pictorial representations first. In this study, the pictorial re presentations produced higher relative importance ratings for two of t he three design attributes, as well as somewhat greater heterogeneity (that is, segmentation) among respondents. However, the verbal represe ntations produced greater predictive accuracy, especially for responde nts who rated the verbal descriptions after they had evaluated the pic torial representations. These results suggest that the pictorial repre sentations improved the respondents' understanding of the design attri butes, while the verbal representations seem to facilitate judgment. ( C) 1998 Elsevier Science Inc.