Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T01:36:07.305Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

From the Car Style Pregnancy towards the Brand Country Origin Recognition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 July 2019

Jean-Bernard Bluntzer*
Affiliation:
Université de Bourgogne Franche-Comté, UTBM, Pôle Transports et Mobilités, ERCOS/ELLIADD, France;
Egon Ostrosi
Affiliation:
Université de Bourgogne Franche-Comté, UTBM, Pôle Industrie 4.0, ERCOS/ELLIADD, France
*
Contact: Bluntzer, Jean-Bernard, Université de Technologie de Belfort-Montbéliard, France ELLIADD- ERCOS, France, jean-bernard.bluntzer@utbm.fr

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

In the modern automotive industry, a car's style clearly defines its brand. In the context of globalization, a question has recently emerged concerning the relationship between a country's culture and the car style of a particular brand. The style is one way to place car morphologies into a meaningful structure, called the “telling structure.” This research hypothesizes that a stylist tries to compress a car's form and make it a refined unicum that is streamlined with some inherent features, which express a brand's cultural aesthetics. Using the cognitive paradigm that an end user transforms explicit references into implic-it references and that the telling structure of a car's design features influences the recognition of the brand, this research demonstrates a novel method to ad-dress this hypothesis. Results from this study show that there is a relationship between the brand's country of origin and the perceived recognition of a car. However, a country's brand culture is not always represented by the style of the cars. In particular, the results indicate that some cars can actually lose their cultural identity, especially in the context of a worldwide market.

Type
Article
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2019

References

Bluntzer, J.-B., Ostrosi, E. and Sagot, J.-C. (2015), “Styling of cars: is there a relationship between the style of cars and the culture identity of a specific country?”, Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part D: Journal of Automobile Engineering, Vol. 229 No. 1, pp. 3851.Google Scholar
Burnap, A., Hartley, J., Pan, Y., Gonzalez, R. and Papalambros, P.Y. (2016), “Balancing design freedom and brand recognition in the evolution of automotive brand styling”, Design Science, Vol. 2, Available at: https://doi.org/10.1017/dsj.2016.9Google Scholar
Cagan, J. and Vogel, C.M. (2002), Creating Breakthrough Products: Innovation from Product Planning to Program Approval, Ft Press, Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ.Google Scholar
Calabrese, G. (2011), “Structure and transformation of the Italian car styling supply chain”, International Journal of Vehicle Design, Vol. 57 No. 2–3, pp. 212229.Google Scholar
Fenko, A., Schifferstein, H.N. and Hekkert, P. (2010), “Shifts in sensory dominance between various stages of user–product interactions”, Applied Ergonomics, Vol. 41 No. 1, pp. 3440.Google Scholar
Fukuda, S. (2010), Emotional Engineering: Service Development, Springer Science & Business Media, London.Google Scholar
Fukuda, S. (2017), “Experience Engineering: Age of Process Values”, Emotional Engineering, Vol. 5, Springer, pp. 117.Google Scholar
Kapferer, J.-N. (2011), Remarques: Les Marques à l’épreuve de La Pratique-500 Marques Passées Au Crible, Editions Eyrolles, Paris.Google Scholar
Karjalainen, T.-M. (2007), “It looks like a Toyota: Educational approaches to designing for visual brand recognition”, International Journal of Design, Vol. 1 No. 1, pp. 6781.Google Scholar
Karjalainen, T.-M. and Warell, A. (2005), “Do you recognise this tea flask? Transformation of brand-specific product identity through visual design cues”, Proceedings of the International Design Congress, IASDR 2005, Douliou, Taiwan.Google Scholar
Kreuzbauer, R. and Malter, A.J. (2005), “Embodied cognition and new product design: Changing product form to influence brand categorization”, Journal of Product Innovation Management, Vol. 22 No. 2, pp. 165176.Google Scholar
McCormack, J.P., Cagan, J. and Vogel, C.M. (2004), “Speaking the Buick language: capturing, understanding, and exploring brand identity with shape grammars”, Design Studies, Vol. 25 No. 1, pp. 129.Google Scholar
Orsborn, S., Cagan, J., Pawlicki, R. and Smith, R.C. (2006), “Creating cross-over vehicles: Defining and combining vehicle classes using shape grammars”, Ai Edam, Vol. 20 No. 3, pp. 217246.Google Scholar
Ostrosi, E., Bluntzer, J.-B., Zhang, Z. and Stjepandić, J. (2018), “Car style-holon recognition in computer-aided design”, Journal of Computational Design and Engineering, Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcde.2018.10.005Google Scholar
Ranscombe, C., Hicks, B., Mullineux, G. and Singh, B. (2012), “Visually decomposing vehicle images: Exploring the influence of different aesthetic features on consumer perception of brand”, Design Studies, Vol. 33 No. 4, pp. 319341.Google Scholar
Sacharin, V., Gonzalez, R. and Andersen, J.-H. (2011), “Object and user levels of analyses in design: the impact of emotion on implicit and explicit preference for ‘green’ products”, Journal of Engineering Design, Vol. 22 No. 4, pp. 217234.Google Scholar
Snelders, D., Morel, K.P. and Havermans, P. (2011), “The cultural adaptation of web design to local industry styles: a comparative study”, Design Studies, Vol. 32 No. 5, pp. 457481.Google Scholar
Steele, C., Jones, R. and Leaney, P. (2008), “Improved tennis ball design: incorporating mechanical and psychological influences”, Journal of Engineering Design, Vol. 19 No. 3, pp. 269284.Google Scholar
Thom, R. (1980), Prédication et Grammaire Universelle, New York, NY.Google Scholar
Thom, R. (1982), Modèles mathématiques de la morphogenèse.Google Scholar
Vignesh, R., Suganthan, R. and Prakasan, K. (2007), “Development of CAD models from sketches: a case study for automotive applications”, Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part D: Journal of Automobile Engineering, Vol. 221 No. 1, pp. 4147.Google Scholar
Warell, A. and Young, K. (2011), “Interior aesthetics: an experience-focused approach for the design of brand-specific automotive identity”, International Journal of Vehicle Design, Vol. 55 No. 2–4, pp. 278303.Google Scholar
Wildgen, W. and Brandt, P.A. (2010), Semiosis and Catastrophes: Rene Thom's Semiotic Heritage, Vol. 10, Peter Lang.Google Scholar