Does the 'Room Effect' generalise to designed products? An investigation of the 'Product Effect'

Successive Malaysian governments have pursued a vision of achieving 'industrialized country' status by 2020. Within this, the Malaysian transport industry comprises motorcycle manufacturers, and Modenas has played a major role, receiving considerable internal investment and acting as a flagship for national ambition. As international competition increases, Modenas risks a reduction in its share of the home market and curtailment of its export ambitions due to free trade tariff reductions; the latter being due to China entering this market. As with the entire automotive industry, market research methods play an important role in product development. Automotive market research consistently focus on how people perceive the product itself, but not on the effect the product has upon how people perceive its owner. In other words, does the product confer its own qualities onto its owner. The present research explores the value products bestow upon the owner by applying a method called the Room Effect, developed in a study by Canter, West and Wools (1974). The research employs both qualitative and quantitative techniques using the Motorcycle Positioning Task and the Room Effect method for pilot surveys, in order to investigate how association with the product, in this case different motorcycles, bestows characteristics upon the person associated with it, which was carried out in Malaysia and Australia. Actual surveys of the Room Effect method finally was carried out by international participants on the Internet. The latter focused upon possible differences due to nationality and gender. The results indicated that the Room Effect method can be applied to products with indications of strong gender and Product Effect. The research indicated that the presence of a motorcycle effected how people were perceived, and that a Product Effect exists in a similar way to the Room Effect. This research provides a new market research method for application in the motorcycle industry, and in the consumer product domain generally.