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1、Exploring the Appeal of Product Design: A Grounded, Value-based Model of Key Design Elements and RelationshipsCharles H. Noble1Associate Professor of MarketingThe University of MississippiandMinu KumarAssistant Professor of MarketingSan Francisco State University1 School of Business Administration,
2、345 Holman, University, MS 38677, USA. email: cnobleolemiss.edu, phone: 662-915-1362, facsimile: 662-915-7968The authors are grateful to the industrial design team of the Hunter Fan Company for exceptional company access, and to two anonymous reviewers and the editor for their helpful guidance throu
3、ghout the review process.Author BiosCharles Noble received his Ph.D. in Marketing from Arizona State University, an MBA from Babson College and a B. S. from Boston College. He joined the faculty of the University of Mississippi as an Assistant Professor in fall 2001 and is currently an Associate Pro
4、fessor and the Morris Lewis Lecturer in Marketing. Charles research interests focus generally on the new product development process. More specifically, his past work has focused on the beliefs and actions of marketing managers in the implementation stage of new product development. More recently, h
5、is efforts have studied industrial (or product) design and how it can me integrated into marketing thinking and research. He has published in several leading journals including Journal of Marketing, Strategic Management Journal, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Manag
6、ement, and IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management. He has also presented his work at numerous international conferences in marketing and industrial design. He was won awards for his efforts in research, teaching and service to the discipline. Charles has consulted for many organizations, primar
7、ily in the airline, retailing, and consumer goods sectors. He is an active member of the American Marketing Association, Strategic Management Society, Industrial Designers Society of America, and the Design Management Institute.Minu Kumar is an assistant professor at San Francisco State University.
8、He is a trained pharmacist and has worked in the pharmaceutical industry for over eight years. He has also consulted with the pharmaceutical and medical device industry on several market research projects involving new product development. He attended the University of Mississippi for his MBA and Ph
9、D work. His main research interest is in product design and how design can be used as a strategic tool for creating consumer based value and differentiation. A secondary stream of research in marketing strategy relates to organizational information processing. Concepts such as organizational learnin
10、g, knowledge management, creativity and their possible outcomes in new product development effectiveness and efficiency and firm performance have been areas of inquiry. Exploring the Appeal of Product Design: A Grounded, Value-based Model of Key Design Elements and RelationshipsAbstractProduct desig
11、n 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 article will explore, product design deals with a much richer range of issues, many of whi
12、ch have not been considered in the marketing literature. In order to explore the domain and elements of design, the authors start with the 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 t
13、he design dimensions within a broader model which ties initial design goals to eventual psychological and behavioral responses from consumers. To achieve these ends, the authors use grounded theory development by conducting an extensive literature review, in-depth interviews and an interactive objec
14、t elicitation technique. Drawing from this rich source of qualitative information as well as diverse literature fields, the authors propose a framework for the creation of design value in consumer products. This framework not only explores the domain of design but also highlights the important eleme
15、nts of design that go well beyond the clichd 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 consum
16、ers; rational value, kinesthetic value and emotional value. 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 po
17、tential to spur marketing and 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 obstacl
18、e 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 which includes testable linkages. Design has become an important tool that can be used by managers to develop dominant brands with lasting adv
19、antages. 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
20、t have a good language to talk about design. In most peoples 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)The core focus in marketing management has always revolv
21、ed around the so-called “Four Ps” of pricing issues, promotions, distribution and, perhaps most fundamentally, topics surrounding the nature of the product or service being offered. However, while numerous characteristics of the product development process have been studied in the marketing literatu
22、re, design of the product itself has received only fragmented study. This article treats product design (PD) as encompassing the functionality, aesthetics, ergonomics, and other facets of a physical product that form contact points with a consumer (Coates 2003). Research attention in this area is ne
23、eded. It is clear that in the modern marketplace product design has a pervasive effect on the desirability of a product, influences views of the parent brand, and directly drives the satisfaction consumers derive from its use. For example, the Dyson vacuum cleaner (see Appendix, A-1) immediately com
24、mands the consumers attention through its many distinctive visual and user features and unconventional, vibrant color choices and has risen to U.S. market share leadership in less than a decade. However, the marketing and new product development (NPD) literature is largely lacking the language to fu
25、lly understand and describe this products design-driven appeal.While various elements of design such as aesthetics and complexity have been studied individually, little work has made the more comprehensive study of design needed to guide meaningful future research in the area. Two prior efforts stan
26、d out as making broader contributions to design knowledge. Bloch (1995) provides an extensive coverage of the psychological and behavioral effects of design, lending a needed link between design and consumer outcomes. However, Bloch (1995) offers little exploration of the nature of design itself, tr
27、eating product form largely as a “black box” in need of deeper attention. Crilly, Moultrie and Clarkson (2004) present a more balanced look at both design elements and detailed consumer outcomes. While insightful, this work differs in several ways from the goals of the research here. First, similar
28、to Bloch (1995), Crilly et. al. (2004) focus primarily on cognitive responses of consumers to design. Next, while Crilly et. al. (2004) do distinguish between several aspects of design, the presumption in starting the current project (based on prior field work) was that this was not nearly a compreh
29、ensive view of the full complexities of the design field. Conceptually, neither of these important pieces provide a theoretical rationale for the nature of design, as this article does in developing a value-based perspective. Finally, both of these pieces provide a broad coverage of various literatu
30、res but neither has an empirical component to explore the actual perspectives on design of consumers and design experts. This research addresses all of these gaps and complements these two earlier pieces.Based on these observations and the still existing gaps in the literature, the authors undertook
31、 this project with the following objectives: (1) To examine a broad range of literature and utilize several qualitative phases to develop a language and framework for understanding product design from a marketing and NPD perspective; (2) to organize these findings into a model of design elements whi
32、ch includes testable research propositions, laying the groundwork for future work in this important area; (3) to develop these insights using a grounded theory-building methodology, which uses several different qualitative phases to elicit the views on design of both consumers and practicing designe
33、rs, adding the first empirical components to work in this general area; and (4) to provide the best links to date between literatures related to design and those from marketing / NPD, suggesting future research opportunities from both perspectives.In the sections that follow, this article first revi
34、ews relevant literature from both within and outside marketing. Next, the grounded theory approach used to gather qualitative insights is detailed. The comprehensive model is then presented, highlighting key variable and linkages between design and consumer influence. Finally, several specific and n
35、eeded areas of future design-based research in marketing and NPD are considered. Related ResearchSurprisingly, research in marketing and NPD generally reflects a limited view of the nature of design. Bloch (1995) presents possibly the most comprehensive work so far by proposing antecedents, mediator
36、s, and moderators of the impact of “product form” on consumer preferences, intentions, and choice. Although Blochs model is rich in insights into possible influences on consumers reactions to product form and how consumers process visual information, the term “product form” essentially remains an un
37、explored, unknown entity. The research here extends and complements Bloch (1995) by considering a much richer array of elements of product design than product form alone, and by greatly expanding understanding of the links between initial design goals and ultimate consumer responses. Beyond Blochs r
38、elatively broad approach, there has been some research done on particular elements of product design. The best-developed stream in this area focuses on the concept of aesthetics.Visual product aesthetics are defined as those characteristics that create a products appearance, including materials, pro
39、portion, color, ornamentation, shape, size and reflectivity (Lawson, 1983). Some contend that product appearance is the fundamental connection in the formation of the consumer product relationship and can even be a source of pleasure to the consumer (Hollins and Pugh, 1990). In this view, visual ima
40、gery marks the first point of contact and an opportunity for impression formation between the potential consumer and the product.In marketing, Holbrook (1986) proposed that individual tendencies toward visualizing versus verbalizing, intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation, tendencies towards romantic
41、ism versus classicism, and gender influence reactions to aesthetic objects. In related work on consumer differences, Bloch, Brunel and Arnold (2003) suggested that responsiveness to aesthetics may vary significantly across consumers, a concept they called centrality of visual product aesthetics (CVP
42、A). Other studies have delved deeper into the dimensionality of aesthetics. In a study of varying product designs, Veryzer and Hutchinson (1998) found that unity and prototypicality elements significantly influenced consumer response. Another often cited component of ideal form, the phi ratio (somet
43、imes called the golden ratio/number) The “golden section” is represented by the Greek letter Phi () and has a value of 1.61803399. The golden section ratio is widely found in nature in the design of leaves, formation of crystals, DNA, and Keplers Law among other things., has been the subject of many
44、 investigations. For example, in two lab studies and an analysis of field data, Raghubir and Greenleaf (2006), found that consumers preferred packages that were built in the phi ratio proportion.From a more strategic perspective, it has been suggested that in a world of increasing commoditization pr
45、oduct aesthetics can be a key source of differentiating advantages (Schmitt and Simonson, 1997). While aesthetics research has generally explored some interesting aspects of consumers reactions to product forms, a deeper knowledge of the area and a connection to other design elements is lacking.Beyo
46、nd research in marketing, product design is a truly eclectic field that draws on a broad-based grounding from fields such art, consumer behavior, engineering, ergonomics, human factors, marketing among others (Coates, 2003). While beyond the scope of this review, this diversity clearly makes a grasp
47、 of design concepts both challenging and stimulating.Despite the breadth of research streams which have touched on issues related to product design, the literature is lacking a unifying design-based framework which would allow for more systematic knowledge advancement in the area. Next, the methodol
48、ogy used to construct such a model is described.Grounded Theory DevelopmentThe general research questions explored in this study were: What are the relevant dimensions of product design as seen by both designers and consumers?; and, How do the dimensions of design fit within a broader framework of f
49、actors influencing the relationship between initial design goals and ultimate consumer influence? To explore these questions a grounded theory approach was considered appropriate. In this method, researchers combine a broad search for literature-based insights with new perspectives generated from qualitative research (Noble and Mokwa, 1999; Strauss and Corbin, 1990
