A research paper by Minu Kumar, assistant professor of marketing, was accepted at the Journal of Product Innovation Management, considered the best Journal on the topic of innovation and product development.
Minu Kumar, Janell Townsend (Oakland University) and Douglas W. Vorhies (University of Mississippi) “Enhancing Relationships with Brands using Product Design” Status: Forthcoming in the Journal of Product Innovation Management.
Abstract
Although product design is an integral part of what comprises a brand, the role of product design in eliciting brand-level outcomes such as consumers’ affection towards a brand are not well understood. It is posited in this research that different types of values perceived from design-based features and attributes, at the product-level, have different effects on higher-order relational outcomes such as brand-affection at the brand-level. Using syndicated product-level data from the automotive industry collected from a national sample of consumers, our findings suggest that the design-based features and attributes that create social value and emotional value have a greater effect on brand-affection than design-based features and attributes that create purely transactional values such as functional value or economic value. These effects are generally greater for consumers who intend to be loyal to the brand than for consumers who intend to switch to another product. The results provide new insights about how consumers’ perceptions of value in design attributes in a product can help create enduring relationships with brands.