Clarity in Defining Product Design: Inspiring Research Opportunities for the Design Process*

The author argues that given the holistic, cross‐functional, and unique nature of the process of product design, more research is needed to understand product design teams. Specifically, future research should address internal processes cultivated within the product design team, macro influences in the product design environment, and the definition of product design team membership.     

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.     

Consumer Response to Product Form in Technology‐Based Industries

Product design is a key driver of competitive advantage and new product success. Relative to its importance, product design remains an underresearched area. The authors address this issue by examining the moderating effects of consumer innovativeness and design acumen on consumer response to product form—i.e., the product's visual appearance. Using subjects from the United Kingdom, these effects were tested with a technology‐based product that is expected to be introduced to market in the near future. A technological innovation was chosen because such products are often characterized by an accelerating pace of innovation and shortening life cycles. In such contexts, the product's visual appearance is often critical to success because it drives inferences about the technical capabilities and functional novelty. Our findings indicate that for more innovative consumers, an innovative product form can further enhance perceived value, product liking, and purchase intention. Furthermore, for consumers who possess more design acumen, an innovative product form can increase perceived value and product liking. An innovative product form was not found to enhance purchase intention for consumers with higher levels of design acumen. A primary implication of the study is to consider target market characteristics such as consumer innovativeness and design acumen when selecting a product form strategy. Additional implications include involving consumer innovators in the development and evaluation of product forms and involving consumers with greater design acumen early in the product's introduction so that they may influence other buyers.     

Pricing and Product Positioning with Relative Consumer Preferences*

Frequent price promotions force consumers to continuously reassess their preferences over product offerings. When this leads consumers to exhibit a bias of “relative thinking”, such as may be triggered by a focus only on the most salient product attribute, we show in a model of sales (Varian, H. R., 1980, American Economic Review, 70(4), pp. 651–659) that this profoundly alters firms' pricing and product-positioning strategies. Vertical differentiation becomes more likely, with firms preferring to occupy the low-quality space in particular when they have few loyal consumers. More generally, product positioning now depends on the composition of consumers' consideration sets.     

Linking Innovation to Design: Consumer Responses to Visual Product Newness

In recent years, researchers have begun to recognize the central role that visual design plays in successful marketing efforts. However, little research has effectively bridged the gap between product innovation and visual design. Before consumers can judge the competitive newness of a product based on its functionality, they first encounter its visual form. Therefore, both innovation researchers and product managers need to be aware of the impact that visual design can have in communicating product newness. In the present work, two studies are described that examine consumers' responses to visual product newness. The first study explores the ability of consumers to recognize and assess product newness using visual design cues and then examines the basis on which these evaluations are made. The second study examines the cognitive and affective reactions that are engendered by exposure to products that are high in visual product newness.     

Shopping for Information: Implications of Consumer Learning for Optimal Pricing and Product Design*

I study a seller's pricing problem where consumers perform costly product research about value before purchase. They buy the product when sufficiently optimistic about value and cease research when sufficiently pessimistic. I find that the seller encourages product research when prior belief about value is high, even though he could sell immediately for a high price. The prior affects both expected value and how additional information changes consumers' beliefs. I show that an increase in research cost affects equilibrium price nonmonotonically. Finally, when the seller chooses price and product value dispersion, the optimal level of dispersion need not be extremal.     

The Different Roles of Product Appearance in Consumer Choice*

Product design has been recognized as an opportunity for differential advantage in the market place. The appearance of a product influences consumer product choice in several ways. To help product development managers in optimizing the appearance of products, the present study identified the different ways in which the appearance of a product plays a role in consumer product evaluation and, hence, choice. In addition, the implications for product design of each role are listed, and managerial recommendations for optimizing the appearance of products are given. Based on a literature review, six different roles of product appearance for consumers are identified: (1) communication of aesthetic, (2) symbolic, (3) functional, and (4) ergonomic information; (5) attention drawing; and (6) categorization. A product's appearance can have aesthetic and symbolic value for consumers, can communicate functional characteristics and give a quality impression (functional value), and can communicate ease of use (ergonomic value). In addition, it can draw attention and can influence the ease of categorization of the product. In a large qualitative study (N=142) it was tested whether these roles indeed exist in consumers' process of product choice and whether they are sufficient to describe the way in which product appearance plays a role for consumers. In addition, qualitative insight into these roles was gained. After making a choice between two answering machines, subjects were interviewed about the reasons for their choice and the product information they used to form the judgments underlying their choice reasons. The six appearance roles indeed proved relevant for consumers and were sufficient to describe the influence of product appearance on product choice. The number of ways in which appearance played a role for consumers differed between 0 and 5; most subjects mentioned two different ways in which appearance influenced their product choice. The aesthetic and symbolic roles were mentioned most often. The preferred shape (e.g., rounded or angular), color, or size were found to differ depending on the way in which product appearance played a role for subjects. For example, bright colors may be valued from an aesthetic point of view but may diminish the impression of quality (i.e., functional value). This makes it difficult to optimize all roles and illustrates that the product value that is most important for consumers when purchasing a specific kind of product should be the starting point in the design of the product appearance. Furthermore, the influence of shape, color, or size on a certain kind of product value—aesthetic, symbolic, ergonomic, or functional—differed between subjects. One person may like a rounded shape, while another may prefer a rectangular shape. This means that the value of guidelines indicating how the perception of a specific kind of product value can be engendered by means of shape, color, and size is limited. This is especially the case for aesthetic and symbolic product value, which are very personal. Therefore it is recommended to test the performance of the appearance of a newly developed product on these six roles with the target group of consumers. Insight into the different ways in which appearance characteristics, such as form and color, may influence consumer choice will increase managers' awareness about how to use product appearance as a marketing tool. In addition, distinguishing these six appearance roles will help product development managers to optimize the product appearance better to market needs, as the roles have different and sometimes even conflicting implications for the design of the product appearance.     

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.     

Consumer Idealized Design: Involving Consumers in the Product Development Process

A considerable portion of the growing body of literature devoted to the design process deals with the roles of internal marketing, production, and research and development teams and their interaction. Such design methodologies could be greatly enhanced by focusing more attention on understanding consumer needs and behavior, especially in the initial stages of product development. Susan Ciccantelli and Jason Magidson describe Consumer Idealized Design, a process for involving consumers in the actual design of a new manufactured good or service. They summarize three case studies involving the application of the process.     

Package Graphic Design: Investigating the Variables that Moderate Consumer Response to Atypical Designs

Designers and marketing managers often agree that visual codes, in terms of product and package design, typify certain product categories. These “category‐based visual codes” refer to the formal and graphic characteristics most frequently seen in a given category, like specific shapes, colors, materials, typefaces, layouts, and illustrations. Given that the concept of “category‐based visual codes” seems to be connected with the concepts of “perceived typicality,” “cognitive categories,” “family resemblance,” and “design newness,” this research examines the impact of typicality/atypicality judgments regarding the visual appearance of a product on consumers' aesthetic appreciation and purchase intent. Several studies have sought to determine the relationships among design perceived typicality, aesthetic appreciation, and purchase intent. However, the literature indicates contradictory results. While some studies have shown a preference for the most typical design, others have demonstrated that consumers prefer moderately atypical design. This paper offers an explanation for this discrepancy by providing evidence that the relationships among design perceived typicality, aesthetic appreciation, and purchase intent are a case of moderated mediation. An empirical study using wine labels was conducted with 780 respondents. The results indicate that the relationships among perceived typicality, aesthetic appreciation, and purchase intent are linear and positive, although several individual variables have a moderating effect. Thus, it appears that certain consumer segments are more likely to appreciate atypical packages. Moreover, the level of perceived risk at the time of purchase also plays an essential role. Consumers are more apt to accept atypical packaging when the perceived risk is low. Several theoretical and managerial implications are drawn from these results.     

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.     

Passion for Work,Nonwork‐Related Excitement,and Innovation Managers’ Decision to Exploit New Product Opportunities

This article investigates the role of affect in innovation managers’ decision to exploit new product opportunities—a decision central to the innovation process. The model proposes that different types of passion can trigger managers’ exploitation decisions but that this effect is contingent on experiencing excitement from events outside their work environment. A field experiment with 90 owner–managers of young firms located in an innovation context (business incubators) shows that passion for work and nonwork‐related excitement levels interdependently impact innovation managers’ decision to exploit new product opportunities. Specifically, harmonious passion has a general positive effect on managers’ propensity to exploit. In contrast, the effect of obsessive passion is more complex and contingent on the additional excitement managers experience such that the positive relationship between obsessive passion and the decision to exploit is more positive with higher levels of excitement. These findings extend the product innovation management literature by acknowledging that decision‐makers’ affective experiences influence innovation decisions and provide a first step toward understanding the role of affect and passion in the product innovation context. Second, the finding that obsessive passion and nonwork‐related excitement interact in explaining opportunity exploitation decisions highlights the need to incorporate contingency relationships in models of innovation decision‐making. Third, in drawing on a field experiment and the experimental manipulation of managerial affect during the decision‐making task, this article answers a recent call in the project management literature to pursue less common methodological approaches and develop “broader theoretical schema” in order to enhance our understanding of innovation management. Finally, this study also has implications for practitioners because it can help innovation managers understand their own decision policies. To the extent that innovation managers are able to regulate their affective experiences, this improved understanding might prevent them from premature and faulty decision‐making.     

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.     

On Elevating Strategic Design Research*

While the popular understanding of the influence of design is growing, academic research has largely been restricted to considering consumer‐level responses to design elements. This paper reviews this past work and proposes a more strategic research agenda for the field, with the potential to explicate linkages between design elements and strategies and outcomes related to innovation and corporate performance.     

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.     

The Design Research Society and Emerging Themes in Design Research*

This paper outlines the role of the Design Research Society (DRS) and explores some of the emerging trends in design research as a field of academic inquiry through its biennial conferences. In doing so it gives some insight into the areas of research which might inform future studies from a perspective of an organization that seeks to support the peer review process both directly and indirectly through conferences and events, journal editing, and as a nominating body for national and international research evaluation panels.     

The Roles of Marketing and Industrial Design in Discontinuous New Product Development*

Radical or “discontinuous” products based on new technological breakthroughs are playing an ever‐increasing role in the success of firms. However, little research has been conducted that investigates the roles of marketing and industrial design (ID) in the development of these types of products. Further, past research has tended to overlook the role that industrial design, and the impact of the marketing‐industrial design interaction, can have on the development of discontinuous new products. Frequently, the term design is used broadly or is equated with engineering; thus, while the marketing–research and development (R&D) interaction is studied, the marketing–ID as well as the industrial design–R&D relationships are not considered. This article examines the roles of marketing and industrial design in the product development process for discontinuous innovations. Specifically, questions concerning how and the degree to which marketing and industrial design are integrated into the development process are investigated. The investigation employs multiple methods, or triangulation, in order to secure an in‐depth understanding of the roles of these disciplines. In the course of examining these questions, key factors influencing industrial design and marketing involvement are identified and preliminary models are examined. The research, which was conducted in two phases, employed a mixed‐method, multiple sample design. The methods used included a survey, field observation study, and depth‐interviewing. Data were collected from three different samples: R&D managers, project team members (including personnel from various disciplines—marketing, R&D, industrial design, engineering, etc.), and industrial design managers. The use of the different data sources and sampling of various groups of managers was employed in order to provide a rich context for investigating the research questions of interest. In addition, a preliminary analysis of factors (e.g., degree of product discontinuity, product innovation objectives, process discontinuity, process formality) identified in the first phase was conducted, and these relationships were explored further in the second phase of the research. Findings across the two phases of this research suggest that the development of discontinuous new products involves a process that is different from more conventional new product development—particularly as it concerns the roles of marketing and industrial design. The high degree of discontinuity inherent in such projects, along with the strong R&D orientation often surrounding them, results in delayed involvement of marketing and ID, as well as altering their roles in the new product development (NPD) process. Factors such as the degree of product discontinuity (DPD), process discontinuity (PCD), and process formality (PF) seemed to exert a differential influence on the involvement of marketing and ID. Although their roles and involvement are altered in discontinuous new product development, this research suggests that marketing and ID roles in this context involve increased challenges with respect to validation of key assumptions and product application directions. Additionally, managers operating in this development context need to explicitly consider the influence of factors such as discontinuity level in undertaking NPD projects with respect to how it affects the execution of industrial design and marketing activities.     

Platform Price Parity Clauses and Consumer Obfuscation*

Several antitrust authorities have investigated platform price parity clauses around the world. I analyze the impact of these clauses when platforms design a search environment for sellers and buyers to interact. In a model where platforms choose the unit search cost faced by consumers, I show when platforms can profitably obfuscate consumers through high search costs. Then, I show that price parity clauses, when exogenously given, can increase or reduce obfuscation, prices, and consumer surplus. Finally, when price parity clauses are endogenous, they are only observed in equilibrium if they hurt consumers.     

Inviting the Amateurs into the Studio: Understanding How Consumer Engagement in Product Design Creates Value

With consumers increasingly taking on the role of product designer, interesting and important avenues for new research are emerging. This article highlights two broad areas that researchers in both consumer behavior and product design may want to consider: (1) what constitutes consumer design and (2) what factors influence value creation when consumers assume responsibility for some or all of the design task.     

Manipulation Through Biased Product Reviews*

We study a signal-jamming model of product review manipulation in which rational consumers consult product reviews and price to better estimate a product's quality, and a firm, whose quality is either high or low, chooses its price and how much bias to insert into product reviews. We show that both firm types always exert positive effort to manipulate product reviews, and, depending on the equilibrium price level, one or both of them can increase its sales. When the high-type firm exerts more effort than the low-type, review manipulation benefits consumers by raising [lowering] their demand for the high-quality [low-quality] product.