Diffusion of new product style

: a total 'sales appeal' forecasting approach for product aesthetic design

Abstract

In recent years, there has been an increase of interest in two phenomena with histories of confusion in product styling - fashions, and the consumers' responses to products' appearance (style). Difficult and recurring questions in the domains of new product development and industrial design are I. to anticipate scientifically what will be the next preferred style, or fashion; II. to anticipate quantitatively when it would be 'competitive' to launch a specific product style; III. to anticipate objectively who will be the first to adopt the new product style. Literature reveals that to anticipate the above is a dilemma of today's new product development projects, because new product development always relies on designers' gut feelings to a large extent. There is a lack of research to investigate quantitatively the establishment of a fashion for practical usage, and that fashion is the distinctive style prevailing and adopted at a given time. The lack of quantitative approach for anticipating the changes of a fashion and style is the burden for integrating product styling fully into the process of new product development. Moreover, the consumers' responses to new product style are under researched in the domains of consumer behaviour, new product development, or industrial design. This thesis examines the establishment of fashion and consumers' responses to new product styles by considering them in totality as the diffusion of new product style, i.e. a new product style would diffuse as a fashion in marketplace through the imitations and interactions between the adopters and non-adopters. 'Sales appeal' is proposed as an optimum and quantifiable criterion for measuring the successfulness of the diffusion of new product style. From a quantitative perspective, this thesis considers that the diffusion of a fashion can be divided into generic components, namely a product style, fashion life cycle, and category of adopters. In addition, it assumes that a new style is commonly assessable under today's communication network. The communication network is not the focus in this thesis. The diffusion and adoption of a product style are hypothesized that they associate with both consumers' psychological systems (emotion and cognition) and design's core entities (meaning and form). A research was conducted to investigate wholly the diffusion of new product style at economic, product-based and consumer psychological levels. The primary purpose of this research is to develop scientific approach to address partially the mentioned challenges. First, the mechanism of the consumers' adoptions of new product style was investigated in three studies. Several research methods were used including: i) case study method to obtain an empirical observation of a complete life cycle of iMac-feel style; ii) interview method to get design experts' general opinions on the prediction of fashion trends; iii) structural interview technique to collect in-depth design experts' opinions on how to distinguish the diffusion status of a product style; iv) questionnaire method to survey Hong Kong college students' personality traits - consumer innovativeness and optimum stimulation level; v) pair-choice experiment to test the students' psychological responses to different degrees of newness of a group of mobile phone designs Moreover, the statistical data analysis methods were employed to examine the collected data of three studies. The findings of the three studies provide knowledge to understand the consumers' choice of new product style, and suggest that the consumers' personality trait of Optimum Stimulation Level (measured by Change Seeking Index), their dual style evaluation (Familiarity value index and Freshness value index) and 'design and nondesign training' are good predictors for predicting their preferences of new product styles. Second, clustering and multiple-dimensional mapping methods were applied to test whether the new knowledge could anticipate quantitatively the pattern of diffusion and adoption of fashions and new product styles. In short, the results of this work can provide evidence about the consumers' innovative behaviour - adoption of new product style along the time line - and the establishment of fashion can be quantitatively anticipated. A total 'sales appeal' forecasting approach is then developed for product styling. Hands-on applications are also proposed regarding the challenges of capturing the life cycle of fashions for product styling or product aesthetic design. Although the general idea behind the thesis is not new in a marketing or technological innovation perspective, it is original within a design context especially the findings provide empirical support for employing quantitative approach to anticipate the life cycle and adoption of a product style. Nevertheless, the findings, hands-on and even questions raised by this thesis may lead to new research niches.

Date of Award	4 Oct 2004
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	City University of Hong Kong
Supervisor	Ying Kit Richard FUNG (Supervisor)