A Study on Product Preference Based on Self-Congruity of Gender Schema

Abstract

As time evolves gender roles and gender stereotype underwent dramatic changes which highlight the limitation of traditional physical gender positioning in product design Therefore the study proposes the necessity to re-examine the gender positioning on both users and products Besides with the rise of self-consciousness products have become a symbol of the way to interpret the self-image of the individuals Several studies on self-congruity also showed that consumers tend to buy the products with higher self-congruity and give them higher evaluations Therefore whether gender schema affects users possess certain products reflecting design characteristics with self-congruity it is the issue this study would investigate The purpose of this research is to find out the design characteristics with high self-congruity of gender schema groups to further discuss the product preference of each group This research utilized Sex Role Scales to divide 110 subjects into 8 groups by gender (male / female) × gender schema (masculine / feminine / androgynous / undifferentiated) and sampled 24 subjects by stratified random sampling method to participate in the interview to extract design characteristics with self-congruity from their possessions through Evaluation Grid Method (EGM) The quantitative analysis of questionnaires was conducted through multidimensional scaling and multiple regression analysis in order to create a configuration plot (map) and indicate the relationship between product preferences and gender schema groups The results showed the differences of design characteristics with self-congruity among gender schema groups By comparing with subjects’ gender schema the results set up design characteristics with self-congruity and the product preference of each group The study discussed the issue from two aspects sex (physiological) and gender schema (psychological) to construct a more complete database of gendered product design characteristics with trends Through introducing gender schema theory we can improve the limitation of traditional physical gender positioning in product design providing designers a better reference standard of gendered product design

Date of Award	2014 Jun 4
Original language	English
Supervisor	Min-Yuan Ma (Supervisor)