The research strategy is determined by the research question investigated in this thesis How are consumers affected by the design of product packaging? And how can construal level theory be ap-plied to product packaging and what implications would this give in the design process of the prod-uct packaging? This is done by approaching the prodprod-uct packaging design through considering the level of construal of it as an independent variable which is determined through a test. The pre-test will help in determining consumers view of what is abstract and what is concrete visual agery. After this a test is made to gain knowledge of the effect of abstract and concrete visual im-agery on the perception of luxury and quality. Participants are asked to rate the level of luxurious-ness and quality they perceive the product to be.
Manipulation
The independent variable in this research is whether the product packaging design is perceived as abstract or concrete. This was defined based on a pre-test asking 20 people to state whether they found the product packaging design to be working on an iconic level or on an indexical level as the most abstract/concrete. The pre-test supported the definitions stated in the methodology section
defining visual imagery working on an iconic level as more abstract while the visual imagery work-ing on an indexical level as concrete. With this definition formulated the visual imagery was manip-ulated as the product packaging design either having a visual imagery with an abstract construal or a concrete construal. To avoid that participant were exposed to both the abstract and concrete visual imagery for the same product packaging, participants were divided into two different groups that both see the same product packaging but with different values of the visual imagery. With one get-ting the visual imagery manipulated to have an abstract value (illustration) and one to have a con-crete value (photograph).
Measurement
The dependent variables are either the perceived level of luxury or quality of the product. The wording of luxurious is taken from the literature on CLT. It is measured on a 7-point likert scale go-ing from “Non-luxurious” to “Luxurious” with the scale bego-ing continuous. The other dependent variable is the degree of quality with a 7-point likert scale from “low quality” to “high quality” with the scale being continuous. This was chosen as to both have a variation in the question formulations and have another word for value that has a less strong connotation than luxurious. Quality was deemed as well-fitted as a correlation between quality and luxuriousness has been found in previous literature (Ko et al., 2019). Furthermore, it is also interesting to see if the “luxurious” wording in CLT does translate into quality when thinking of food.
Another way that the dependent variable is measured besides the likert scale is through the use of ET. In earlier literature it has been found that people tend to fixate on stimuli they are uncertain about and find hard to interpret for a longer duration as they need more time to process what exactly they are looking at. In this study it is therefore expected that participants will fixate for a longer du-ration on the abstract visual imagery as these takes more processing to interpret what it is than a photograph of the actual product would. Further, another indication of uncertainty is the number of revisits that the participant will make to a specific AOI. Therefore, in this study participant will likely revisit the abstract visual imagery more times than the concrete visual imagery as they need to see the abstract visual imagery several times before being certain about what it is showing.
Comparison
The manipulated independent variables are split in two groups with dependent variables measured in fixation duration, number of revisits, time to first fixation on the text and self-report on the per-ceived luxuriousness and quality of the product. The dependent variables for each group are com-pared to see if there is a difference in how uncertain participants are with being presented with an abstract visual imagery or a concrete visual imagery. An indication of uncertainty is the number of revisits and the fixation duration and both of these is expected to be higher for the abstract visual imagery. The time to first fixation to text, the uncertainty will show in a shorter time to first fixation to the text. In regard to the self-report on the likert scale it is anticipated that participants will rate the abstract visual imagery as being perceived as more luxurious and higher quality whereas the concrete visual imagery will be seen as less luxurious and lower quality.
Control
The product packaging designs tested will only differ in the value of the visual imagery on it mean-ing whether the visual imagery works on an iconic or an indexical level. All other stimuli of the product packaging design will be identical to assure that if there is a difference in how the product packaging design is perceived it can only be due to the visual imagery and the manipulation that the authors of this study have made. A change in shape, color, font etc. would be a salient stimulus that would affect the participants eye-movements. Further, to assure the participants focus on the visual imagery on the package most unnecessary information is stripped from the package such as brand, pattern and other visual imagery as these could all have an influence on the consumers choice of the product. This is done to have a limited amount of other visual stimuli that the participant needs to process. The reasoning for keeping some is for the ecological validity of the product as in a super-market one would always find a text on the product stating what it is.