Affective engineering: towards a consumer culture theory approach to kansei engineering

ABSTRACT

In recent days, companies find it extremely difficult to predict consumers' needs and requirements (Pickton and Broderick, 2005). While mass marketing arguably belongs to the past, it is now a less viable strategy to satisfy consumers by a single offer (Smith, 1956). Thus, the adoption of innovative and cross - disciplinary techniques might be a key factor in order to understand consumers and define their needs and requirements towards the design of new products. Affective engineering is a field of product design that deals with the translation of consumers' feelings for a product into design elements (Jordan 2000; Henson et al. 2006). Kansei engineering is an affective engineering methodology, in which tools and techniques from a wide variety of fields, such as psychology, ergonomics, information systems, sociology and marketing, are implemented, in order to link consumers' feelings and emotions with product properties and translate them into design elements (Nagamachi 1995; Schutte et al. 2004). The aim of this paper is to explore the kansei engineering field, from a consumer culture research perspective. Consumer Culture Theory 'refers to a family of theoretical perspectives that address the dynamic relationships between consumer actions, the marketplace, and cultural meanings' (Arnould and Thompson, 2005: p. 868). In order to achieve this, an introduction of a variety of qualitative tools and techniques currently utilized in consumer culture theory is made and an attempt to incorporate many of these methods within the kansei engineering field is conducted through the proposition of a theoretical framework.

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