关键词: 面部宽高比, 汽车前脸表情, 支配性感知, 产品拟人化, 喜好度

Abstract: Consumers can obtain clues about product features from its “product face”, thereby shaping preferences for various products. This mechanism may be similar to the preferences for human faces. Facial width-to-height ratio (fWHR) and facial expressions are examples of such clues, which can be used to describe the faces and characters of anthropomorphic products such as cars. People can perceive the front face of a car as a human’s face and relate the characteristics of the car with the features of its front face. One of these characteristics is the perceived dominance, which refers to the perception of one’s authority or control over others. Young people are inclined to buy something with high perceived dominance to increase their own feelings of dominance. The purpose of the present study was to demonstrate that the fWHR of a car’s face was related with the trait of perceived dominance, which further influenced young consumers’ preference, while the expression of the car face moderated this effect. Two studies were conducted using questionnaires and experiments. In Study 1, a single-factor within-subject design was used to explore the effect of fWHR on perceived dominance and preference of cars. 104 young consumers participated this study. In Study 2, 220 young consumers participated a between-subject design. The independent variables were fWHR (low/high) and facial expression (aggressive/friendly) of the car front face and the dependent variables were perceived dominance and preference. In the two studies, the participants were required to see the photos of the car front face at first and then report the rankings of their perceived dominance and preferences. Finally, all these data were analyzed by SPSS 20.0. The proposed effect and a moderated mediation model was tested using ANOVA and the PROCESS macro. The results showed that: (1) There were significant differences in the perceived dominance [F(2,202) = 13.44, p < .001, ηp2 = .32] and preferences [F(2,202) = 34.36, p < .001, ηp2 = .25] of the car front faces among different fWHR levels. Compared with the low and medium levels of fWHR on the front face, the cars with a high level of fWHR had higher perceived dominance and preference rankings. (2) The fWHR positively predicted the consumers’ preference, p < .05. (3) The perceived dominance completely mediated the association between the fWHR and the consumers’ preference, p < .001. (4) This mediation effect was moderated by the expression of the front face in that it was significant for aggressive expression conditions (p < .001) while not significant for friendly expression (p > .05). The current study is the first to demonstrate the effect of fWHR on Chinese young consumers’ choices, and the moderated mediation of the perceived dominance and the expression of the front face on their preference in cars. The effect of fWHR on the preference was mediated by the perceived dominance, and it differed across different expressions of the front face. It suggests that the car designers pay more attention to not only the expression design but also the fWHR when determining the front face.

Key words: Facial Width-to-Height Ratio (fWHR), facial expression of cars, perceived dominance, product anthropomorphism, preference