The effects of psychological manners on visual and tactile evaluation of towel preferences of Turkish and Japanese consumers

Abstract

This study investigated the visual and tactile evaluation of 10 towel samples made from different fiber contents. The survey was conducted by Turkish and Japanese panelists. It was also studied how psychological manners can change their preferences. To test these facts, two kinds of trial (blind test and open test) were applied on panelists. In this way, it was observed that some of the panelists changed their first preferences from synthetic fiber-based towel to natural fiber-based towel. This fact verified that psychological manners had a great effect on Turkish consumers’ preferences, and fiber content and thickness were the most distinctive properties. Then, the preferences of the panelists were ranked and the most preferred samples were determined and compared with Japanese consumers’ preferences. It was also found that Japanese people were more consistent than Turkish people and external factors and psychological manners were not effective on their decisions.

Keywords:

• Tactile
• psychological manners
• towel
• natural fiber
• synthetic fiber