J PROD INNOV MANAG 2011;28(S1):208–220 © 2011 Product Development & Management Association
Linking Innovation to Design: Consumer Responses to Visual Product Newness* Scott K. Radford and Peter H. Bloch
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.
Introduction
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onsumers have always been attracted to the new. In the 1950s, crowds would follow car dealers’ searchlights every fall to see the new models from Detroit. In the 60s, teens would draw close to their transistor radios on top 40 stations to catch the newest songs from The Beatles, The Beach Boys, or Motown. Today, we line up for hours to secure the latest generation of iPhone while dozens of cable TV shows and Internet sites attempt to slake our desires for information on new fashions, cameras, or movies. Consumers are walking on a “hedonic treadmill,” continually seeking novel products as fresh sources of pleasure (Raghunathan and Irwin, 2001). As consumers become bored with familiar goods, they are increasingly attracted to novel alternatives as stimulation sources (Iyer, 1988; Martindale, Moore, and West, 1988). Although scholars have long studied product innovation and adoption, there has been surprisingly little research on consumers’ perceptions of product newness. The focus has typically been on the development of new product technology and features rather than on the receipt of the newness message among buyers. The connection between product innovation and visual design remains understudied despite being recognized as an important
Address correspondence to: Scott K. Radford, Haskayne School of Business, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta Canada T2N 1N4. Tel: (403) 220-7247. Fax: (403) 282-0095. E-mail:
[email protected]. * This research was partially funded by the College of Business Summer Research Program at the University of Missouri.
issue by innovation researchers (Hauser, Tellis, and Griffin, 2006) and the growing interest in consumer reactions to design generally (e.g., Bloch, 1995; Leder, Belke, Oeberst, and Augustin, 2004; Veryzer and Hutchinson, 1998). Research on new product adoption has largely ignored visual form, focusing instead on other dimensions such as verbal descriptions (Hoeffler, 2003), mental simulations (Feiereisen, Wong, and Broderick, 2008) and learning effort (Atuahene-Gima, 1995). It is our contention that the newness of a product is strongly communicated through its design, and visual product newness (VPN) is a central determinant of new product adoption. The present research focuses on the role that visual design elements play in determining newness assessments. Consumers today are faced with an increasing number of product and brand options as they seek to make successful purchases. As extreme examples, Fielding (1994) noted that Nike had 347 different models of athletic shoes in their catalogue and that a local pharmacy stocked 75 kinds of toothbrushes. Not only are consumers faced with an immense number of products, which often represent small variants within the same line, but they are also faced with a proliferation of marketing materials supporting these products. This cluttered environment creates confusion and difficulty in making decisions (Mitchell and Papavassiliou, 1999). As firms introduce new products to market, visual design serves as a core component that enables a firm to gain consumers’ attention, and stand out from the clutter (Bloch, 1995). Given that consumers are strongly drawn to things which are new, the success of any innovative product
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rests on how it is perceived by the target market. An innovation is new as long as the buyer perceives it as such (Johannessen, Olsen, and Lumpkin, 2001). This is best summarized by Rogers (2003, p. 12) who states that: “An innovation is an idea, practice, or object perceived as new by an individual or other unit of adoption.” Rather than an objective feature, newness is a trait attributed to a product by a consumer (e.g., Blythe, 1999; Hauser et al., 2006) and reflects a comparison of the current product with previous versions in the same or proximal categories. Consumers react to a product by placing it on a continuum that ranges from minimal or evolutionary change to extreme or revolutionary change (Veryzer, 1998). Those products which differ most within the category will be perceived as newer, and will also gain consumer’s attention because this newness differentiates them from the product clutter. Because product newness will be judged by the potential adopters, it is important to understand how these buyers form such judgments. The focus of the present research will be on visual product design as a key determinant of newness perceptions. Several studies have looked at design reactions generally and thus provide insight into the manner in which design elements influence newness perceptions. Coates (2003) posited that consumers’ first reactions to a product are affective, based largely on its visual form. These reactions are triggered by the product’s apparent complexity, symmetry, and other form elements. Similarly, Hollins and Pugh (1990, p. 91) noted that “whatever the product, the customers see it first before they buy it. The physical performance comes later, the visual always comes first.” The design of the product provides meaning through its ability to communicate product
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES Scott Radford is Assistant Professor of Marketing at the Haskayne School of Business. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Missouri and has a Bachelor of Environmental Design Studies from Dalhousie University. He has published in the Journal of Macromarketing and presented at the American Marketing Association, Association of Consumer Research, and Macromarketing Conferences. His research is primarily concerned with consumer responses to product design, particularly in the areas of product innovation and mass-customization. Peter Bloch is Professor of Marketing and Pinkney C. Walker Teaching Excellence Fellow at the Trulaske College of Business. He studied at the University of Texas and has previously taught at the University of Massachusetts and Louisiana State University. He has published numerous articles dealing with various aspects of consumer behavior. His current research interests include design effects on buyers, the origins of product-related hobbies, and the modern culture of celebrity. Bloch teaches consumer behavior at the undergraduate and graduate levels and is a leader in the use of classroom technology.
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attributes. For example, power tools must look rugged and powerful, the shape of a sailboat must communicate speed and agility, and the form of a new toy signals its potential for fun. Thus, the critical first assessment of newness is expected to rest on its visual design rather than on any advanced functionality. While these rapid, affective responses are tied most closely to product appearance, a deeper product understanding rests on cognitive processes. Cognitive processing, which includes classification and interpretation of the stimuli, is believed to follow affective reactions (Leder et al., 2004). For example, a new automobile model may first elicit a “wow” type of response on a show turntable, and later consumers may be able to better articulate the underlying basis for this response. It is not sufficient for a product to have new features, it must also look new, because the visual design of the product is its most effective newness cue. Consumers decode design elements in order to categorize a product and position it with respect to other competing goods. Drawing from past research on both cognitive and affective responses, Crilly, Moultry, and Clarkson (2004) proposed a comprehensive framework that integrates four types of consumer responses to a visual stimulus: (1) emotional response, raw feeling such as admiration, amusement, or disgust; (2) aesthetic impression, judgments of attractiveness level or aesthetic quality; (3) semantic interpretation, what the design seems to say about the function of the product; and (4) symbolic association, the personal and social meanings attached to the design. Although we may assume that new products engender all four categories of responses, we do not know how the pattern of responses may vary with differing levels of product newness. In other words, it is unclear whether newer products exhibit different patterns of emotional response, aesthetic impression, semantic interpretation, or symbolic association than do more mature goods. In the following sections, we presents two studies that examine consumer responses to new product design and the visual design characteristics that consumers use to infer product newness. The first study addresses the categorization of products based on newness and examines the emergence of these responses and the strategies consumers use to make them. The second study advances the Crilly and colleagues (2004) categorization of aesthetic response by examining how consumers’ responses to new products are affected by newness perceptions using an attribute elicitation technique. The specific research questions that this paper attempts to explain are summarized below:
LINKING INNOVATION TO DESIGN
1. Are consumers able to categorize products on the basis of newness using only visual design cues? 2. On what basis do they make these newness judgments? 3. Do responses to product design differ across levels of perceived newness?
Study 1: Identification of Visual Product Newness In the first study, participants were asked to sort new product concepts based on the relative newness of each product, using a Q-methodology. This method is particularly effective in studying complex issues where it is difficult for individuals to articulate the reasons that motivate their attitude toward the subject (Bouwer, 1999; Dawson, 1988; Kleine, Kleine, and Allen, 1995; Stephenson, 1975). Judgments of product form are quite subjective, and individual differences are likely to determine the way that consumers interpret the visual product form (DeBono, Leavitt, and Backus, 2003). As a measure of attitude towards objects, Q-methodology has been used to study attitudes towards advertising (Al-Makaty, van Tuburgen, Whitlow, and Boyd, 1996), images of tourist destinations (Dewar, Li, and Davis, 2007), and perceptions of workplace behaviors (Anandarajan, Paravastu, and Simmers, 2006).
Procedure Participants were 50 students (26 female) recruited from a senior class in marketing at a large Midwestern University. Each subject received course credit for participating in the study. In seeking products with a wide range of possible newness levels, we consulted several sources including design and technology-oriented publications (e.g., I.D., Wired, Popular Science, The Futurist), other design researchers, and online design message boards. This approach was similar to that used by Hoeffler (2003) in identifying radical new products. Four product categories were selected because they exhibited a high level of design activity and were relatively inexpensive. We also picked these categories because the participants should be somewhat familiar with all of the product categories, but would be unlikely to be experts or demonstrate high involvement with any of them. This situation provides a stronger focus on visual product design and is of greater potential value to managers and researchers. Two of the product categories, espresso makers and hand vacuums, were presented to participants in the form of photographs. Although pictorial representations of
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products are commonly used in design studies (see Vriens, Loosschilder, Rosbergen, and Wittink, 1998), we believed that using physical products as well offered additional insights. Therefore, the other two product categories were physical goods: pens and toothbrushes. A preliminary set of 32 products was identified in each category based on quality of available photographs, distinctiveness, and meeting basic criteria, such as products targeted at the home market in espresso makers. To reduce this set, procedures were adapted from recent scale development research (e.g., Bearden, Hardesty, and Rose, 2001; Bloch, Brunel, and Arnold, 2003) and from item selection procedures in visual product design studies (e.g., Whitfield and Slatter, 1979). For each product item, five judges were asked to evaluate its newness on a threepoint scale (0 = does not look new at all, 1 = looks somewhat new, and 2 = looks very new) and attractiveness (0 = unattractive, 1 = somewhat attractive, 2 = highly attractive). The purpose here was to generate a reduced set of 20 products for each of the four categories. Based on the summed ratings, two product items representing high (ⱖ6) attractiveness and low attractiveness (
