Exploration of Action Figure Appeals Using Evaluation Grid Method and Quantification Theory Type I

Contemporary toy is characterized by accelerating social, cultural and technological change. An attractive action figure can grab consumers' attention, influence the latent consuming preference and evoke their pleasure. However, traditional design of action figure is always dependant on designer's opinion, subjective experience and preference. It could be a selling risk in the marketing in terms of new action figure. Therefore, how to objectively extract the appeal information of action figure is an important topic for aiding designers to develop an action figure of satisfying consumers. This study explores the task of action figure appeal to consumer psychological perception. A series of investigation is conducted to collect the action figure appeals including the abstract psychological perceptions and concrete factor/feature descriptions by means of the existing action figures based on the procedure of Evaluation Grid Method. Then, the Quantification Theory Type I is used to establish the relationship between the abstract consumer psychological perceptions and the concrete action figure appeal factors. The results show that the action figure appeals can be objectively and systematically extracted, and provide designers with useful design information to develop a particular action figure for satisfying consumers.