The sounds elicited when a customer uses a product frequently provide useful information regarding the nature and/or functionality of the product with which they are interacting. A number of studies have now demonstrated just how profoundly such auditory cues can influence people's overall multisensory (or multimodal) evaluation of a variety of different products, such as electric food mixers, vacuum cleaners, and even cars. Interestingly, these effects often occur in the absence of any awareness on the part of the customer (or participant) of the role played by hearing in their overall product perception. Here at the Crossmodal Research Laboratory in Oxford, we have been developing a novel experimental technique, based on a robust psychophysical paradigm adopted from the field of cognitive psychology, that allows us to evaluate the effect of changing the sound made by a particular product on people's product perception. For example, we have investigated the effects of changing the overall sound level and the spectral distribution of the sounds made when people use products such as an electric toothbrush or an aerosol spray on their perception of the pleasantness, forcefulness, and powerfulness of those products. The experimental technique (which is reviewed here) has the advantage over many other approaches in the field of psychoacoustics in that it allows one to rapidly and accurately determine which of a wide range of different product sounds best fits a specific product category or brand image. What is more, the technique that we have developed also enables one to evaluate a range of novel product sounds without having to generate (in advance) products for testing that have the desired auditory profiles, hence potentially speeding-up the product development/innovation process.
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