Enhancing Consumers' Affection for a Brand Using Product Design

Product design is an integral component of a brand and an important driver of brand equity. For the brand, product design is an important tool for driving differentiation, creating value for both the consumer and the firm, driving consumer preferences, and creating a sustainable competitive advantage. At the firm level, the importance of investing in design has been substantiated by studies that suggest firms capable of creating innovative design and providing superior consumer value perform better in the marketplace. Thus, product design clearly presents an important area of research for those studying and managing brands. In this context, the goal of this research is to explain the brand‐level affective outcomes that product‐level design features can create. This paper develops a conceptual framework and hypotheses that theoretically connect design‐based values, at the product level, to affective brand‐level relational outcomes with the brand. The drivers of product affection include social value, altruistic value, functional value, emotional value, and economic value. Analogous to “firm affection,” the paper postulates a brand affection construct that is defined as the passion and pride that a consumer feels about owning a brand. Using syndicated product‐level data from the automotive industry collected from a national sample of consumers, 712 useable consumer/product observations of 30 small vehicles are employed in the analysis. A confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation model are developed to test the conceptual model. This research finds that the social value and emotional value that a design provides to consumers have a greater effect on brand affection than purely transactional values, such as functional value or economic value. This research contributes to the literature by providing evidence that product design‐related values are multifaceted and can contribute to relational outcomes, such as brand affection. It contributes to practice by highlighting the means by which design can be used as a strategic tool to create a sustainable long‐lasting relationship with the consumer, and provides managers with a framework to assess the impact of design‐based values on long‐term relationship‐based outcomes. The results provide new insights about how consumers' perceptions of the value of product design at the product level can help create enduring relationships with brands.     

Visualizing the Self: Exploring the Potential Benefits and Drawbacks for New Product Evaluation

This study examines the role of visual processing in new product evaluation. The primary goal of this research was to provide insights into the role of visualization content (self‐related versus others‐related images) in product evaluation as it differentially relates to two separate types of products—incremental products and really new products. This study's results show that for incremental products, visualizing with self‐related images (versus others‐related images) led to higher evaluations. In this context, it seems that familiarity with the product category from which an incremental product extension is generated enables individuals to produce images easily where they can see themselves using the new product. In some sense, self‐related visualization might be thought of as a form of surrogate experience with the new product. The ability to self‐reference during evaluation provides positive benefits to the evaluation outcome. Contrasting this result, this study's findings showed that for really new product introductions the previously identified benefits of self‐visualization were not realized. Confirming this study's prediction, the advantage of self‐visualization over others‐related visualization was lost. This is attributed to consumer difficulty in visualizing the full application of a really new product to their current consumption behavior. Of further interest, this study's results also showed that in the case of really new products others‐related visualization facilitated higher evaluations than self‐visualization. The mediating role of visualization‐based evaluation difficulty provides further explanation for these findings. Self‐related images are shown to be difficult to imagine in a really new product context, whereas imagining others utilizing the really new product is shown to be significantly easier. Perhaps individuals can see the benefits and better understand the novel applications of a really new product when visually simulating someone else using it but have more trouble imagining the applicability of the innovation in their own life. These findings are integrated into a discussion of the managerial implications and the potential avenues for future research in the area.     

Self‐Reflection and Articulated Consumer Preferences

Accurate measurement of consumer preferences reduces development costs and leads to successful products. Some product‐development teams use quantitative methods such as conjoint analysis or structured methods such as Casemap. Other product‐development teams rely on unstructured methods such as direct conversations with consumers, focus groups, or qualitative interviews. All methods assume that measured consumer preferences endure and are relevant for consumers' marketplace decisions. This article suggests that if consumers are not first given tasks to encourage preference self‐reflection, unstructured methods may not measure accurate and enduring preferences. This paper provides evidence that consumers learn their preferences as they make realistic decisions. Sufficiently challenging decision tasks encourage preference self‐reflection which, in turn, leads to more accurate and enduring measures. Evidence suggests further that if consumers are asked to articulate preferences before self‐reflection, then that articulation interferes with consumers' abilities to articulate preferences even after they have a chance to self‐reflect. The evidence that self‐reflection enhances accuracy is based on experiments in the automotive and mobile phone markets. Consumers completed three rotated incentive‐aligned preference measurement methods (revealed‐preference measures [as in conjoint analysis], a structured method [Casemap], and an unstructured preference‐articulation method). The stimuli were designed to be managerially relevant and realistic (53 aspects in automobiles, 22 aspects for mobile phones) so that consumers' decisions approximated in vivo decisions. One to three weeks later, consumers were asked which automobiles (or mobile phones) they would consider. Qualitative comments and response times are consistent with the implications of the measures of predictive ability.     

Supportiveness of Organizational Climate, Market Orientation, and New Product Performance in Chinese Firms

Most knowledge development efforts in new product development have focused on Western economies and companies. However, due to its size, rapid growth rate, and market reforms, China has emerged as an important new context for new product development. Unfortunately, current understanding of the factors associated with new product success in China remains limited. We address this knowledge gap using mixed methods. First, we conducted 19 in‐depth interviews with managers involved in new product development in 11 different Chinese firms. The qualitative fieldwork indicated that firm behaviors and employee perceptions consistent with the phenomena of market orientation and the supportiveness of organizational climate both are viewed as important drivers of the new product performance of Chinese firms. Drawing on the marketing, management, and new product development literature this study develops a hypothetical model linking market orientation, supportiveness of organizational climate, and firms' new product performance. Direct relationships are hypothesized between both market orientation and supportiveness of organizational climate and firms' new product performance, as well as a relationship between supportiveness of organizational climate and market orientation. Data to test the hypothetical model were collected via an on‐site administered questionnaire from 110 manufacturing firms in China. The hypothesized relationships are tested using structural equation modeling. Results indicate a positive direct relationship of market orientation on firms' new product performance, with an indirect positive effect of supportiveness of organizational climate via its impact on market orientation. However, no support is found for a direct relationship between the supportiveness of a firm's organizational climate and its new product performance. These findings are consistent with resource‐based view theory propositions in the marketing literature indicating that market orientation is a valuable, nonsubstitutable, and inimitable resource and with similar propositions in the management literature concerning organizational culture. However, this study's findings also indicate that in contrast to a number of organizational culture theory propositions and empirical findings in some consumer service industries, the impact of organizational climate on firm performance in a new product context is indirect via the firm's generation, dissemination, and responsiveness to market intelligence. These results suggest that an effort to improve firms' new product performance by enhancing the flow and utilization of market intelligence is an appropriate allocation of resources. Further, this study's findings indicate that managers should direct at least some of their efforts to enhance a firm's market orientation at improving employee perceptions of the supportiveness of the firm's management and of their peers. This study indicates a need for further research concerning the role of different dimensions of organizational climate in firms' new product processes.     

Augmenting innovation project portfolio management performance: the mediating effect of management perception and satisfaction

Firms face the challenge of efficiently and effectively investing scarce resources in innovation projects in order to sustain or develop a firm's long‐term competitive advantage and sustainable growth. Innovation project portfolio management (IPPM) describes a firm's dynamic capability to assess the challenge of evaluating, selecting, and prioritizing innovation projects. The particular impacts of method usage, criteria usage, IPPM design, information availability, and internal interactions on management perception and satisfaction as well as on IPPM performance and innovativeness are hypothesized and tested. We found that methods and criteria play a negligible role in the IPPM context. IPPM design elements, like transparency and formality, are key drivers of high IPPM performance. Information availability is a key construct in driving IPPM performance, as well as management perception and satisfaction. Relevance of IPPM is supported by revealing IPPM performance's positive impact on firm performance, innovation project performance, and firm's innovativeness.     

Embodied Cognition and New Product Design: Changing Product Form to Influence Brand Categorization*

This article explains how embodied cognition and perceptual symbol systems enable product designers to influence consumers by communicating key perceptual features through subtle changes in product design elements. In this way, managers can change perceptual design elements to support line extension strategies. More specifically, design changes can be used as a tool to help evolve consumer perceptions of a product's uses and brand category membership. The role of perceptual symbols in product design is illustrated by a well‐known off‐road motorbike brand that planned to extend into the street motorbike segment. In order to facilitate consumer acceptance of a street motorbike from this off‐road brand, the firm gradually introduced models containing an increasing number of elements of street motorbikes over a period of several years. The authors use this example to show how typical design elements of the target product category can be effectively integrated with design elements of the current product category by simply modifying key characteristics of product‐shape attributes. This process is further tested in an experiment, where motorbike models differing slightly in key product features (e.g., product shape) were rated on their resemblance to street or off‐road motorbikes. The results show a strong effect of these design changes on brand‐category membership. Managerial implications of this approach and future research directions are discussed.     

Back‐loading: A Potential Side Effect of Employing Digital Design Tools in New Product Development

Over the past 20 years, the use of digital design tools such as Computer‐Aided‐Design (CAD) has increased dramatically. Today, almost no product development project is conducted without the use of CAD models. Major advantages typically ascribed to using CAD include better solutions through broader exploration of the solution space as well as faster and less expensive projects through faster and earlier iterations. This latter effect, the shifting of simulation and testing traditionally accomplished with the help of physical prototypes late in the process—a slow and expensive activity—to doing similar activities with virtual prototypes faster and earlier in the process, has been identified as a key aspect of front‐loading, an activity shift promising to enable superior product development (PD) performance. Given CAD's recent pervasive use, the research questions for this paper became “how has CAD use actually changed the way in which product development is conducted, and through which mechanisms and pathways can CAD impact PD performance, especially with respect to the idea of front‐loading?” This paper addresses these questions by studying in a longitudinal comparison in detail two similar product development projects, one conducted in 2001, the other in 2009. The projects were carefully selected to isolate the substantially higher levels of CAD use of the second project while controlling for most other input factors that influence project performance. The project with substantially higher use of CAD exhibited significant improvements in prototyping costs but only marginal changes in project time and project engineering labor cost relative to the project with lower CAD use. In‐depth intra‐project analysis on the phase level reveals that the use of CAD affected how the product development was executed, with both positive and negative consequences. In addition to, and separate from positive aspects of front‐loading, unintended consequences in the form of back‐loading work are also observed. Back‐loading can occur in two places in the product development process: First, the availability of CAD systems can cause an early jump into detail design, effectively shortcutting concept development. Second, the ability to relatively quickly conduct small changes virtually to the design can erode process discipline; late changes are made simply because they are possible. Both of these effects back‐load work in the opposite direction of the positive front‐loading. The theoretical implications of our observations are discussed, and a simple framework to convert our findings into managerial advice is proposed.     

Seeking the Ideal Level of Design Newness: Consumer Response to Radical and Incremental Product Design

To develop successful new products, new product development managers need to have a thorough understanding of the consumer adoption process, specifically in how consumers evaluate new products. This research examines the value of product design for consumers' evaluation of radical and incremental innovations. The primary goal was to empirically test how design newness affects consumer response to product innovations. Design newness (also referred to as novelty or atypicality) is defined as the deviation in a product design from the current design state of a certain product category. Although prior research has suggested that higher levels of design newness may have a positive effect on consumers' evaluations of new products, higher levels of design newness may also have negative consequences for consumer response to radical innovations. An experimental context (n = 130) using systematically designed products for three product categories was used to test how consumers respond to high and low levels of design newness for both radical and incremental innovations. The findings show that for radical innovations, embodying the product in a design with a low (versus high) level of design newness led to more positive evaluations and less learning‐cost inferences. Because the functional attributes of a radical innovation are incongruent to existing products, consumers find it difficult to access the relevant product category schema in order to transfer knowledge to the new product. Because of this poor knowledge transfer, consumers may feel that they lack the ability to make effective use of the radical innovation, resulting in greater learning costs. In this case, a product design with a low level of design newness can provide consumers with a frame of reference for understanding the radical innovation. Contrasting this result, no difference was found between a low and a high level of design newness for incremental innovations. For incremental innovations, by definition the functional attributes characteristic to the innovation are highly comparable with those products that are already stored in consumers' memory. Thus, there is no need for an additional reconfirmation of the preexisting schema through product design, and consumers are able to access the relevant schema regardless of the level of design newness inherent in the product. These findings are integrated into a discussion of the managerial implications and the potential avenues for future research.     

Delineating Design Factors that Influence the Global Product Launch Process*

Preparing for and managing the global product launch process offers unique challenges as each targeted country can pose unique differences across the design categories of channel parameters, country mores, language and colloquialisms, and technology infrastructure. Though not an exhaustive list, these have a predominant influence on the global product launch process on a per‐global‐region basis. Using a case‐study methodology, this article draws on the global product launch experiences of two firms, showing that such influences preclude use of a mass‐marketing, standardization approach. Though it appears that certain elements of global product launch may be standardized for purposes of efficiencies, a global product launch appears to require at least some degree of customization. Such thinking parallels a design perspective, which mandates a tailoring of product and marketing mix to encourage early acceptance within the intended global market. To suggest when customization should be employed, four design categories of channel parameters—country mores, language and colloquialisms, and technology infrastructure—appear to have strong propensity to dictate customized design requirements for a worldwide launch, where greater differences across these design categories would mandate more customization toward each respective global region. Post hoc comments by managers in the focal case studies support this and further delineate that these four design factors necessitate keen consideration in the course of planning and enacting activities during the global product launch process. The two cases studies especially show that customized design decisions will likely pertain to launch schedule due to local retailers' calendars, product aesthetics due to local consumer preferences, point‐of‐sale and other marketing communications due to language requirements, and technology enhancements in light of local market acceptability and both social and regulatory expectations. Managers involved in planning a global product launch should therefore heed channel owners—brand owners, retailers, and distributors—so that they give preference to, promote, and sell the respective company's product relative to competitors' products. To assist toward securing such preference status, channel owners should have a role in advising the timing of launch and design considerations (e.g., color and form). Logistic issues, such as delivery and after‐sales support via this channel, are keen considerations as well. Logistics has to be thought through to ensure that demand can be met across all regions for a new product. And with the growing prevalence of Internet worldwide, managers must pay keen attention to cultural references and language used on any Internet site to ensure that the product is properly represented and promoted during its global launch. The process of a global product launch is therefore more than the company's ability to gain access to a particular market; it is the company's ability to understand key design issues per each global region respectively and to respond to pressing global region differences by customizing the total product offering to meet the needs of that global region.     

Integrating the Kano model into a robust design approach to enhance customer satisfaction with product design

The aesthetic qualities of products are critical factors in achieving higher customer satisfaction. This study presents a robust design approach incorporating the Kano model to obtain the optimal combination of design form elements. This can effectively enhance customer satisfaction and aesthetic product qualities with multiple-criteria characteristics. The Kano model is used to better understand the relationship between performance criteria and customer satisfaction, and to resolve trade-off dilemma in multiple-criteria optimization by identifying the key criteria in customer satisfaction. The robust design approach combines grey relational analysis with the Taguchi method to optimize subjective quality with multiple-criteria characteristics. This simultaneously yields the optimal aesthetic performance and reduces the variations in customer evaluations. Based on Kano model analysis, a weight adjustment process determines the weight of each product criterion for achieving the desired customer satisfaction performance. This process guides the prioritizing of multiple criteria, leading to higher customer satisfaction. A mobile phone design experiment was conducted to verify the benefits of using the proposed integrative approach. Results show that the generated optimal mobile phone design can effectively enhance overall aesthetic performance and customer satisfaction. Although mobile phone designs are the examples of this study, the proposed method may be further used as a universal robust design approach for enhancing customer satisfaction and product quality with multiple-criteria characteristics.     

Reducing Ongoing Product Design Decision‐Making Bias*

The objective of this exploratory study is to add to our understanding of ongoing product design decision‐making to reduce eventual decision‐making bias. Six research questions are formulated with the aim to establish if and how functional membership and informal patterns of communication within an organization influence whether and why employees are willing to engage in product design modifications. We selected as a field site for our study an industrial company that had an internal research and product development operations and where the employees were located on the same site. A three‐step approach within the manufacturing case company was designed: (1) In‐depth interviews were carried out with managers and employees; (2) a survey questionnaire was sent out to all employees involved with a specific product that is subject to potential design modifications; and (3) a post hoc group feedback session was organized to further discuss our findings with the management. First, analysis of the nine in‐depth interviews establishes a taxonomy of product design decisions involving four types of criteria; product‐related, service‐related, market‐related, and feasibility‐related criteria explain why employees would engage or not in product design modifications. Second, it is demonstrated that functional membership has a significant influence on the concern for these decision‐making criteria as well as on the decision to proceed or not with product design modifications. In other words, functional membership influences whether and why employees are more or less willing to make product design modifications. In this manufacturing company, a global industrial player, the differences in concern appear especially for service‐ and market‐related criteria and pertain particularly to the research and development (R&D) and service function. Overall, even though the perceived performance of the specific product under study did not differ significantly among the different departments, it is observed that R&D employees were significantly less in favor of proceeding with product design modifications than other employees were. Third, using UCINET VI software, we provide some explanations for this finding. It is shown that informal patterns of communication (i.e., employee degree centrality) operate a situational opportunity to make modifications to an existing product and a cognitive opportunity influencing the decision to modify product design following an inverted U‐shaped function. Ultimately, we derive practical guidelines for an ideal product–team composition to reduce product design decision‐making bias.     

Getting More from Cross‐Functional Fairness and Product Innovativeness: Contingency Effects of Internal Resource and Conflict Management

This research investigates how organizations' internal resource and conflict management influence the relationship between cross‐functional fairness and product innovativeness. It considers two contextual dimensions of both internal resource management (job rotation and internal rivalry) and conflict‐handling mechanisms (integrating and avoiding) as key components of the firm's ability to convert fair interactions, across departments, into product innovativeness. The tests of the study's hypotheses, based on a sample of more than 200 Canadian‐based firms, confirm that the cross‐functional fairness–product innovativeness relationship is amplified at higher levels of job rotation and integrative conflict handling but suppressed at higher levels of internal rivalry and avoidance of conflict handling. The authors discuss the study's implications and future research directions.     

The Predictive Power of Internet-Based Product Concept Testing Using Visual Depiction and Animation

One critical step in new product development is selecting from among multiple possible product concepts the one that the firm will carry forward into the marketplace. There is a need for low‐cost, parallel testing of the appeal of new product concepts, the results of which closely mirror ultimate market performance. In this article, the authors first describe an Internet‐based product concept testing method they developed that incorporates virtual prototypes of new product concepts, substituting them for physical prototypes. The method can be used with either static representations of the products or with dynamic representations that demonstrate how the product works through a simulated video clip of its operation. The objective of this method is to allow design teams to select the best of several new concepts within a product category with which to proceed, without having to develop physical prototypes. The authors then provide a rigorous test of both virtual prototype methods against tests using both physical prototypes and attribute‐only (i.e., no visuals), full‐profile conjoint analysis. Nine concepts compete against two actual products in the tests. Market shares from the test using the physical prototypes are defined as the “actual” market shares. Predicted market shares for the attribute‐only, full‐profile conjoint analysis and each of the two virtual prototype methods are compared to those obtained for the physical prototypes. Both static and animated virtual prototype tests produced market shares that closely mirrored those obtained with the physical products, outperforming the set of predictions across the full range of products produced in the attribute‐only conjoint analysis. Interestingly, the attribute‐only conjoint analysis identified the top three products, in correct order. It was unable to differentiate performance below these top three products. Furthermore, it predicted market shares for the top three products to be well below those achieved using physical prototypes. As virtual prototypes cost considerably less to build and test than their physical counterparts, design teams using Internet‐based product concept research may be able to afford to explore a much larger number of concepts. Virtual prototypes and the testing methods associated with them may help reduce the uncertainty and cost of new product introductions by allowing more ideas to be concept tested in parallel with target consumers.     

Brand‐Specific Design Effects: Form and Function

Product design is inherently a key component of brand strategy. Accordingly, significant resources are invested to improve product and brand performance; however, foundations for understanding the role product design plays in influencing actual consumer opinions from the marketplace have not been fully explored in the literature. This paper develops a conceptual framework illustrating how two critical design factors—form and function—impact consumer opinion and delineate brand‐specific effects. Nonmonotonic effects are identified, as well as the interaction effects of the individual factors among the dimensions. A longitudinal model based on objective measures of form and function is tested with a data set developed from models available in the U.S. automotive market from 1999–2007; it includes 16 firms, 32 brands, and 137 products. The results indicate the relationships between factors of form and function are multifarious and complex, but clearly play a significant role in forming consumer opinions, although they do exhibit diminishing returns. The findings further indicate brand‐specific effects exist, and consumer opinions vary by brand. The findings provide foundations for understanding the interplay between product development and brand management. Overall, this research supports the notion that brand strategies can be supported through the management of design dimensions.     

In the Eye of the Beholder? The Effect of Product Appearance on Shareholder Value

In times of convergence with regard to product functionality and performance, the appearance of a product constitutes an important source of competitive advantage. Astonishingly, only a few studies have empirically examined the relationship between design‐related aspects and firm value. Moreover, existing studies predominantly use accounting‐based and/or subjective performance measures. Against this background, the present work assesses the contribution of the three most important product design dimensions (i.e., aesthetic, ergonomic, and symbolic value) to the creation of firm value in the context of the automotive and consumer electronics industry. To do so, we examine stock market reactions to the unveiling of a new product's appearance to the public using event study methodology. In particular, we combine perceptual data at the consumer level with stock market data to examine how target consumers' perceptions of the aforementioned design dimensions are related to abnormal returns following the unveiling of a new product. Results reveal that ergonomic value is positively related to abnormal returns, while aesthetic value only exerts a significant positive effect on abnormal returns if the product also exhibits a certain degree of functional product advantage. Finally, symbolic value exerts a negative influence on stock market reactions. These findings have important implications for the allocation of design‐related investments to aesthetic, ergonomic, and symbolic design features.     

Linking Product Development Outcomes to Market Valuation of the Firm: The Case of the U.S. Pharmaceutical Industry*

The purpose of this research was to examine empirically the effects of new product development outcomes on overall firm performance. To do so, first product development and finance literature were connected to develop three testable hypotheses. Next, an event study was conducted in order to explore whether the changes in the stock market valuation of firms are influenced by the outcomes of efforts to develop new products. The pharmaceutical industry was chosen as the empirical context for the present study's analysis largely because the gate‐keeping role played by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) provides a specific event date on which to focus the event study methodology. As such, this study's events were dates of public announcements of the FDA decisions to approve or to reject the New Drug Applications submitted by the sponsoring firms. Consistent with the efficient market hypothesis, this study's results show that market valuations are responsive strongly and cleanly to the success or failure of new product development efforts. Hence, one of this study's key results suggests that financial markets may be attuned sharply to product development outcomes in publicly traded firms. This study also finds that financial market losses from product development failures were much larger in magnitude than financial market gains from product development successes—indicating an asymmetry in the response of financial markets to the success and failure of new product development efforts. Hence, another implication of this study's results is that managers should factor in a substantial risk premium when considering substantial new development projects. The present study's results also imply that managers should refrain from hyping new products and perhaps even should restrain the enthusiasm that the financial community may build before the product fully is developed. The effect on firm value is severe when expectations about an anticipated new product are not fulfilled. Managers in effect should take care to build reasonable and realistic expectations about potential new products.     

Perspective: A Review of Marketing Research on Product Design with Directions for Future Research

The authors provide synthesized summaries of research on product design conducted over the 20‐year period from 1995 to 2014, as well as suggestions for future research. Building on the conceptual model of product design proposed by Luchs and Swan, the current project describes research findings based on a review of 252 articles drawn from eight of the academic journals most influential to marketing thought, and identified by their inclusion of the terms “product design” or “industrial design” within their abstracts, subject terms, and/or author supplied keywords. Specifically, the authors provide integrated summaries of 25 product design subtopics organized within Luchs and Swan's original 11 product design research topic categories, which, in turn, address the following three general product design research categories: context and strategy, product design process, and product design consequences. These summaries are followed by suggested future research opportunities to address gaps in the literature. In addition to seeking inspiration for future research based on a review of extant research, the authors illustrate an approach for exploring research opportunities based on current and emerging industry trends, such as sustainability, the sharing economy, and the emergence of consumer‐oriented health and performance management products. For each identified industry trend, the authors provide illustrative design implications with consequent illustrative research opportunities. This balanced approach to identifying near‐term research opportunities based on extant research and based on industry trends, i.e., looking forward and externally, may in turn improve the potential impact of future research on both knowledge development and on industry practice.     

Linking Marketing and Engineering Product Design Decisions via Analytical Target Cascading*

Firms design products that appeal to consumers and are feasible to produce. The resulting marketing and engineering design goals are driven by consumer preferences and engineering capabilities, two issues that conveniently are addressed in isolation from one another. This convenient isolation, however, typically will not result in optimal product decisions when the two problems are interrelated. A method new to the marketing community, analytical target cascading (ATC), is adopted here to explore such interrelationships and to formalize the process of coordinating marketing and engineering design problems in a way that is proven to yield the joint optimal solution. The ATC model is built atop well‐established marketing methodologies, such as conjoint, discrete choice modeling and demand forecasting. The method is demonstrated in the design of dial‐readout household scales, using real conjoint choice data and a parametric engineering product design model. Results indicate that the most profitable achievable product can fall short of predictions based on marketing alone but well ahead of what engineering may produce based on original marketing target specifications. A number of extensions can be accomplished readily using techniques from the extant marketing and design optimization literature.     

Customer and Supplier Involvement in Design: The Moderating Role of Incremental and Radical Innovation Capability

More and more firms are leveraging design as a resource to gain the upper hand in today's competitive business market. To this end, this study draws on the resource‐based view (RBV) of the firm to examine the relationship between customer and supplier involvement in the design process and new product performance. The research also extends the RBV to a contingency lens by introducing product innovation capability (incremental and radical) as a moderator to draw the boundary conditions of the impact of customer/supplier involvement in design on new product performance. Using data collected from Canadian high‐tech companies, the findings provide strong support for the hypotheses in that customer involvement in design helps new product performance under high incremental innovation capability but harms new product performance under high radical innovation capability. In contrast, supplier involvement in design was beneficial to new product performance under both high incremental and radical innovation capability. The managerial implications for the role of design under different innovation capabilities are discussed.     

Exploring the Appeal of Product Design: A Grounded,Value‐Based Model of Key Design Elements and Relationships*

Product design is increasingly being recognized as an important source of sustainable competitive advantage. Until recently, the domain of design has been loosely categorized as “form and function” issues. However, as this paper will explore, product design deals with a much richer range of issues, many of which have not been considered in the marketing literature. To explore the domain and elements of design, the paper begins with two major goals: (1) to elicit the key dimensions of design and to develop an enriched language for the understanding and study of design; and (2) to integrate the design dimensions within a broader model that ties initial design goals to eventual psychological and behavioral responses from consumers. To achieve these ends, grounded theory development is used by conducting an extensive literature review, in‐depth interviews, and an interactive object elicitation technique. Drawing from this rich source of qualitative information as well as diverse literature fields, a framework is proposed for the creation of design value in consumer products. This framework not only explores the domain of design but also highlights the important elements of design that go well beyond the clichéd form and function issues. The resulting model reflects specific marketplace and organizational constraints that may help or impede the conversion of designer goals to so‐called design levers. These levers are used to convey three types of values to consumers: rational, kinesthetic, and emotional. The framework then explains how and when these different values may be perceived by the consumer. Within this framework, testable research propositions and specific directions for future design‐based research are also offered. Beyond its potential to spur marketing and new product development (NPD) management thought, the framework offered here represents a significant contribution to the field of design, which has historically been represented as a highly fragmented body of knowledge. Formalizing this framework should help overcome perhaps the largest obstacle to date to marketing‐related and NPD‐related research in this area—the lack of a detailed and consistent nomological view of the scope of design dimensions including testable linkages. Design has become an important tool that can be used by managers to develop dominant brands with lasting advantages. This research lends the NPD manager and the marketing manager better insights in into how this increasingly popular focus can be used to influence consumer behavior and firm success. “Design may be our top unexploited competitive edge.” Tom Peters, 2004 (cover review of Norman, 2004 ) “We don't have a good language to talk about [design]. In most people's vocabularies, design means veneer.… But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a man‐made creation.” Steve Jobs, Apple Computers