Perceived Quality in the Automotive Industry: Do Car Exterior and Interior Color Combinations Have an Impact?

Since in the automotive field colors play an important role, the present study tried to answer the following questions: is the perceived quality (PQ) of the vehicle interior color different after visually exploring the car body color? If so, how? Here, exploiting immersive virtual reality simulations and eye-tracking technology, participants were asked to visually explore an unbranded car in different exterior/interior color combinations and rate its PQ. Fixation duration (time eyes are fixed on a target) was considered as an implicit measure of visual attention allocation while PQ evaluations were considered as explicit measures of individual preferences for car colors. As for eye-tracking data, the results showed that white and red car exteriors affected the attention to interiors with the fixation duration being longer for gray than black interiors. Moreover, the subjective evaluations of car PQ predicted eye-tracking patterns: as the negative evaluation increased, the fixation duration on car interiors also increased. Overall, these preliminary results suggested the need to further explore the relationship between PQ and attentional/motivational processing as well as the role of subjective aesthetic preferences for color combinations in the automotive field.