1. CYBER DESIGN COMPETITION

今年前半では、政策・メディア研究科の院生また、学部生の合計14名で Space For Scape というグループを 組み、コラボレーション活動を通じて、昨年11月に ソウルで開かれた環境デザイン世界学会の一部として開かれた STUDENT CYBER DESIGN COMPETITIONへの提出作品の制作に取り組んだ。

Space for Scape Group

作品内容としては、温泉で知られている草津という地域に、 インタラクティブ・テクノロジーやウエラブル・メディアを当てはめ、 「草津」という空間をリデザインしたものとなっている。 制作過程においては、実際に草津へ足を運び、合宿を開いて、 作品制作に取り組んだ。 残念ながら、入賞を果たすことは出来なかったものの、 院生・学部生が皆一緒に一つのテーマに取り組むという、 それぞれのバックグラウンドの違いが、面白いアイディアを生み、 結果として非常にいい形でのコラボレーションを行うことが出来た。 出来上がった作品へは以下にリンクをはってある。

WANDERLANDへのリンク

2. 広告における人間工学的検討

2-1. 研究課題

本研究では、人間の視覚情報受容・認知・分析機能の特性に着目し、 人間生態としての視覚情報受容能力を、眼球運動測定実験を通して測る。 実験を通して、人間行動を定量化することにより、 広告の形態そのものに人間光学的検討を応用し、より現代社会が 抱えているニーズに応えられる広告形態、中でも最新メディア媒体に対応出来る 広告形態への確立を目標としている。

2-2. 研究内容

今年度の研究内容としては、文献サーベイと実験を実地、また修士論文の 執筆を開始した。 文献サーベイに関しては、修士論文を英語で執筆する予定である為、 主に英語の文献をサーベイし、またマーケティング・リサーチ会社 にも訪れ、実験方法等についても詳しく教えて頂き、 自分自身の実験方法へのアイディア等を提案して頂いた。 また、実験では、実験準備として、手法の検討や素材の収集・編集を行い、 研究における予備実験としてテレビCFを用いた眼球運動測定実験を行った。

2-3. 研究のまとめ

修士論文を英語にて執筆する予定でいる為、以下研究内容は英語 で記してある。

Research on the Human Ability to Interpret and Analyze Visual Information:
A Human Ergonomic study on Advertisement Styles and Advertisement Effectiveness Measuring Methods

1. Introduction

In recent years, advertising styles and advertisements themselves have been changing dramatically as new media forms such as the internet have become more and more common in our lives. Not only has the style of advertising itself changed, but the process of creating advertisements has also been affected and adjusted so that each advertisement can target and influence wider audiences. Methods where consumers were once segmented according to sex or age or position in society no longer can reflect the infinitely variable consumer values and needs in today's society accurately, as they once could for example, in the postwar era. This change in people's values is partly due to the fact that more cultures are interacting with each other than in the past, thus influencing and widening the range of people's sense of values. This change has made it necessary for advertising firms and manufacturing industries to target a much wider range of consumers when planning advertisements.

In my research, I will examine the relationship between advertisement effectiveness and personality traits, first by studying the different personality-types. Second, I will take into view how the differently the advertisements appeal to consumers of different personality types, thus influencing their purchasing intentions. From the results gained from this study, I will attempt to introduce and establish a new method for measuring advertisement effectiveness that includes aspects. Furthermore, the main goal of this thesis will be to establish a new style of advertising more adapted and suited to the human cognitive system, than the advertising styles that are frequently used today.

2. Theoretical Background
2-1. Advertisement Effectiveness

In a time when consumer needs and values are changing greatly, it has become necessary and more important than in the past for advertising agencies to take into consideration advertisement effectiveness as one of the key elements when planning advertisements. Advertisement effectiveness includes the views and influences consumers gain from seeing advertisements and in nearly every advertising agency, the effects of advertisements are measured through questionnaires and eye movement pattern analyses as a means of gaining feedback. Consumer behaviour is also a critical factor in marketing and this also is another field where advertising firms bring in their efforts.

As a key researcher in Japan, Kobayashi (1991) has analyzed the advertisement effectiveness measuring methods of Japanese advertising agencies, and based on his research, has written a handbook on the topic. In the book the author writes that when measuring advertisement effectiveness, generally, two types of effectiveness should be considered; the actual effect the advertisement has on sales figures, and the communication ability of each advertisement. Many studies, especially in advertising agencies, have been conducted where the communication effectiveness of advertisements have been analyzed, and from such analysis results and from the vast experience that such agencies have, nearly every firm has developed their own unique method for measuring the effectiveness of advertisements. However, here lies one of the problems in the advertising world. It has often been pointed out that as each company has a different system of measuring advertisement effectiveness that is based on standards and parameters that differ according to each company, advertisements cannot be compared to one another with relative ease. This also means that although advertisement agencies may conduct experiments based on their own creative work, other agencies' advertisements may not be included in experimental work. Another problem lies also in the fact that not all of the details of each company's system are disclosed to the outside; thus we can only guess from the framework as to what types of statistics and steps are required in the system.

2-2. Measuring Advertisement Effectiveness

As a means of measuring advertisement effectiveness, many studies have also been conducted to show how consumers actually interpret the visual information in advertisements. In Phillips (1997), a study has been done to show exactly "how consumers interpret complex visual images in advertising" (p.77). A distinctive characteristic of this research is that the advertisement's actual producers and creators interpretations are also included as part of the study to show that may show "similarity or differences about the interpretation process" (p.77). In this study, advertisements that display pictorial metaphors are selected as stimuli and the results of a questionnaire are analyzed that were answered by a body of students on what they perceived from the advertisement and how they interpreted the metaphor. For example, one of the pictorial metaphors shown in the experiment was an advertisement of a fabric softener where a picture of a cacti with its sharp pricks is on the right hand of the advertisement. On the left hand side is a picture of the same cacti except that it's prickles are no longer there leaving the cactus looking smooth. In the corner of the cacti on the right is a small picture of a bottle of fabric softener, the message being portrayed here is that using this fabric softener will leave your clothes soft, not uncomfortable like the cacti with it's prickles.

In the results, the interpretations differed from each person accordingly, and both weak and strong implicatures are found. Advertisements with strong implicatures managed to withdraw the same message from a majority of the experimental subject body, whereas advertisements with weak implicatures were interpreted in a variety of ways, thus showing that consumers can at times find the intended messages of metaphorical advertisements difficult to interpret correctly. The study also focuses on the actual interpretation process and shows that when one sees a pictorial metaphor in an advertisement, one will interpret the advertisement not only on the basis of the visual imagery the advertisement uses, but also prior common knowledge also takes a part in the process of extracting a message from such advertisements. For example, when students were shown the advertisement of the fabric softener with pictures of two cactus, they knew from previous experiences and common knowledge that the two pictures of the cactus were there to be compared and that the message could be withdrawn by comparing the two pictures and looking at the difference between the two.

2-3. Consumer Behaviour

Consumer behaviour also is an important factor when planning advertisements. Generally, consumers are divided into groups that reflect their need and values but studies have shown that there are numerous ways of segmenting consumers in marketing. In recent studies, categorizing consumers from psychological aspects has proved to be a valid method for classifying consumers into groups. In those studies, researchers have tried to make clear the relationship between the impressions and influences people gain from advertisements by studying consumers from a personality traits basis. Research also has been conducted focusing on the relationship between consumer personalities and responses to visual information (Labarbera, Weingard and Yorkston, 1998). In LaBarbera, Weingard and Yorkston's research, consumer personalities are grouped by applying Jung's "personality type theory" method. In this study, consumers' individual differences were classified according to the "descriptive dimensions" of Sensing and Intuiting. In LaBarbera's research, two advertisements were made for each product of a fictious brand, one with a sensor-type suiting image and the other with intuitive-type imagery. The imagery for this experiment were chosen as a result of a pre-test where 24 visual images that more of less fitted into either of the two personality-types were chosen by advertisement agency staff with at least several years experiment. In the pre-test, experiment subjects were asked to look at the imagery and mark on a seven-point scale their overall evaluation of advertisement, the image appeal of the advertisement, and their purchase intentions. At the same time, subjects were asked to select from a list of vocabulary, words that described the image. As a result of the main-test, LaBarbera found that when consumers were divided into the sensor and intuitive types, sensor-type consumers preferred advertisements with sensor-images, and intuitive people preferred advertisements with intuitive images. The test results showed that advertisements with images that reflected their personality-traits were evaluated more highly than advertisements that did not reflect their congruent personality types, thus LaBarbera concluded that considering advertisement images through personality traits could produce a "considerable difference in image appeal" of customers, and boost the advertisement evaluation, thus enhancing the advertisement effectiveness. As an overall result, this study shows that "personality-type preference information is useful in understanding and predicting how consumers may interpret and respond to advertising messages" (p.29).

Although previous research has shown that psychological personality-traits are key elements that can help advertisers anticipate the kinds of reactions that will be perceived from certain types of consumers when they are shown particular advertising imagery, rarely has advertising been looked at from a psychological and also from a more scientific aspect of visual information perception at the same time. My research will combine these perspectives.

3. Reference List

Foxall, Gordon R., Goldsmith, Ronald E. (1983), "Personality and Consumer Research; Another Look," Journal of the Market Research Society 30 (2) 111-125

LaBarbera, Priscilla A., Peter Weingard, and Eric A. Yorkston (1998), "Matching the Message to the Mind: Advertising Imagery and Consumer Processing Styles," Journal of Advertising Research 38 (5), 29-43.

Lohse, Gerald L. (1997), "Consumer Eye Movement Patterns on Yellow Pages Advertising," Journal of Advertising 26 (1), 61-73.

Philips, Barbara J. (1997), "Thinking Into It: Consumer Interpretation of Complex Advertising Images," The Journal of Advertising, 26 (2), 77-87.

Kobayashi, Tasaburo (1991), 新・広告効果測定ハンドブック　実践編 (The New Advertisement Effectiveness Measuring Handbook Practice Version), Japan: 日本能率協会総合研究所

Kobayashi, Tasaburo (1991), 新・広告効果測定ハンドブック 理論編 (The New Advertisement Effectiveness Measuring Handbook Theory Version), Japan: 日本能率協会総合研究所