As a method of marketing communications between companies and consumers, packages serve as a ¡§spokesperson¡¨ of the product on the point-of-sale. These may have significant impacts on the process of consumers¡¦ purchase decisions. Consumers also make inferences from the products packages, and the location of the product image on a package facade was one of the factors that influences consumers¡¦ perceptions of the visual heaviness of the product and evaluations of the package, which is called ¡§product image location effect.¡¨ Based on previous studies on the product image location effect, this study distinguished the product image locations into two places: perceived as heavy or light. Furthermore, three types of sensation cues (¡§vision-only¡¨, ¡§vision and touch simultaneously¡¨, and ¡§vision then touch¡¨) are considered in this study in order to understand how the product image location effect works. In addition, individual differences in need for touch (NFT) is also incorporated into this research to examine how it may sway the results of product image location effect and consumers¡¦ confidence when judging products. The present study employed an experimental design to investigate the effects of product image location (bottom-right vs. top-left), the type of sensation cues (vision-only vs. vision and touch simultaneously vs. vision then touch), and autotelic need for touch (low vs. medium vs. high) on consumers¡¦ evaluation of perceived product heaviness and confidence in product judgments. A 2x3x3 factorial design was conducted. Six different scenarios were established through virtual packages and different sensation inputs. A quantile method was used to distinguish consumers into low, medium and high autotelic NFT. Consumers¡¦ evaluation was measured by perceived product heaviness and confidence in product judgments. The results indicated that when there was a tactile input, the product image location effect would disappear. Besides, compared to those who were medium and high in autotelic NFT, product image location effect was more influential on those who were low in autotelic NFT. In addition, in vision-only condition, location of the product image influenced consumers¡¦ confidence in product judgment. According to these findings, this research contributes to the further understandings of product image location effect and provides implications for researchers and marketers on package design.

In two-level fractional factorial designs, homogeneous variance is a commonly made assumption in analysis of variance. When the variance of the response variable changes when a factor changes from one level to another, we called the factor dispersion factor. Formerly, many researches have discussed about how to define the dispersion effects, but the problem of finding optimal designs when dispersion effects present is relatively unexplored. However, a good design not only save the experiment cost but also let the estimation more efficiency. In this research, we focus on finding optimal designs for the estimation of location main effects when there are one or two dispersion factors, in the class of regular unreplicated two-level fractional factorial designs of resolution Ⅲ and higher. We show that by an appropriate choice of the defining contrasts, A-optimal and D-optimal designs can be identified. Efficiencies of an arbitrary design are also investigated.