Figure 3
From: Design aspects of vaginal applicators that influence acceptance among target users
PCA biplot for the external preference map obtained from liking ratings and attribute ratings. Panel (a) shows the product plot using the first two principal components; that is, it shows the similarity of each product in relation to the others when all sensory attributes are reduced into two dimensions in PCA. Panel (b) shows the attribute and consumer liking loadings; that is, each participant’s liking vector is shown as a gray dashed line, while each sensory attribute vector is shown as a solid blue line, using the same two PC axes (i.e., the first two dimensions from the PCA, which explained 74.26% of the variance). Comparison of the consumer liking vectors to the sensory attribute vectors reveals attributes that drove liking/disliking. For example, products on the right side of the plot in Panel (a) were most liked (as shown by the dashed gray vectors in Panel (b) for each participant), and these products were in the opposite direction of the perceived length vector in Panel (b). Greater liking for products on the right side of Panel (a) is wholly consistent with means in Fig. 2. Collectively, the preference map indicates greater overall liking associates with scores for grip, color, ease, visual liking, and expected liking in the body, implying the increase in product liking was driven by specific product features and not merely familiarity. Also, the cardboard tampon applicator was perceived as being more environmentally friendly, but this was insufficient to drive an increase in liking for this disliked product.
