Tag Archives: design

Cases

Yido, a modern Korean pottery

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Yido is a widely-known premium pottery brands in Korea. It was found by Yi, Yoonshin, a ceramic artist. She successfully established herself in the business world not only because her work reinterprets traditional Korean ceramics in refined contemporary design but also because she paid attention to the two marketing lessons.

First, she listens to market. Recently, Yido launches a new collection called Cera/Mano. Differently from other collections which has four pieces of bowls for a family of four, this newly launched collection consists in only one piece designed for single family buyers.

DML_Yido

Second, she goes beyond products. In the four-story flagship store, only one floor is dedicated to ceramic-ware sales. on other floors, a Italian restaurant, a brunch cafe, a ceramic academy, and a art and living store run. If other ceramic designers learn these marketing lessons, I assume, they will be able to become market-savvy designers.

Reference

Joo J. & Peterson, S. (2012), “Learning about innovative risk mediation strategies from entrepreneurs in creative industries,” AAG 2012, Working with Freedom: Learning about innovative risk mediation strategies from entrepreneurs in creative industries, New York.

Creative entrepreneurial ventures are characterized by uniquely personal branded offerings with enormous potential for profit, combined with huge market and execution risk. What differentiate creative entrepreneurial ventures from that of technology ventures are their dependency on a few individuals’ intangible breakthrough ideas. The absence of process control and metrics for evaluating cost, risk and required time commitment makes Return On Investment (ROI) impossible to assess.

Consequently, private investments are virtually unattainable. The subsequent extreme financial pressure combined with ineffective processes leads to destructive behaviors. Traditionally, three independent and mutually supportive approaches exist to mitigate risk and increase profit in creative ventures. These are: (1) Education: Providing market and executions knowledge and experiences through schooling, internships and apprenticeships, (2) Funding: Government and/or trade association backed with coaching and financing, and (3) Collaboration: Pooling of resources and creative talent to leverage individual talents and mitigating risk.

We propose using Design Research, Design Thinking and technology venture insights to develop methods and tools for sustainably running creative entrepreneurial ventures. First, we will identify best practices, by qualitative research within the creative fields of design, music, game, movie and art in the cultural settings of Los Angeles, Copenhagen and Seoul. Secondly, we identify knowledge transfer opportunities and conduct brainstorming sessions to synthesize new methods and tools. The outcome will be a creative portfolio management matrix, outlining how to best take ideas from concept to commercialization as a function of market and execution risk for the examined creative disciplines.

Cases

PhD thesis: paper vs. book

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Marketing PhD candidates write papers. However, some design PhD candidates publish books. I have received book-format theses from two people who obtained their design PhDs from European universities. I also know of some other design PhD candidate in US  who are presently writing books for their PhD degrees. Why do marketers and designers require different formats of work to obtain PhD degrees?

I believe that design PhDs are asked to have a broad understanding about an area, whereas marketing PhDs are asked to generate specific piece of information from an area. An author of a book (PhD in Design) raises a broad question (e.g., value of design thinking), reviews others’ answers comprehensively, and then makes his/her own argument. Differently, an author of a research paper (PhD in Marketing) raises a specific question (e.g., value of design thinking is greater when economy is good than when economy is bad), reviews others’ answers briefly, and then test the question by performing statistical analysis. In sum, design PhDs make a holistic approach whereas marketing PhDs make an analytic approach.

Publications

Interface between design and marketing

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20111031_Huffington Post

Designers don’t just put cosmetics on the skin of a product!” During my interview with a graduate student at Ontario College of Art and Design in 2009, he argued that designers play a key role in developing a new product….

… The primary reason that marketing researchers often limit the role of designers is that they pay far too much attention to the “outcome” of designers’ activities. Many designers who research users, develop and evaluate concepts, and work with business strategists find it difficult to communicate with marketers, since marketers shed little light on the “process” of designers’ activities. …

 

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20111108_Huffington Post

In actual practice, designers often set the marketing input aside and start a project by looking at advertisements and websites for their client’s and their competitors’ products. They collect images and stories concerning the uniqueness of each product and make fleeting trips to the products’ point of purchase, taking pictures and playing with the products. If the budget allows, they purchase a sample of products for later disassembly and destruction in the studio. Ideas for new features often stem from the designer’s personal experience — including his cultural and social background — and their project research into nature, art, fashion, architecture, entertainment, and other products. …

… At the end of the day, marketing is often presented with three to five realistic finished rendered concepts from which they have to select one for detailing. Often flash will out compete content, since no objective metrics have been presented, so it is little wonder that design is still seen as art rather than as being business driven.

Cases

Do people like an unexpected design of a product?

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burger king

We often meet a product with a unique form and find it difficult to guess how it works. Examples include a donut-looking tape by 3M, a burger/fries/coke-looking USB key by Burger King, or a chocolate-looking mirror by Meiji, a Japanese chocolate manufacturer. One of my Japanese friends even pointed me a website in which a designer keeps posting his/her design prototypes (Prototype 1000).

I wonder whether consumers like a product more when its form and function are inconsistent than when they are consistent.

Prototype1000

Noseworthy, T. J., & Trudel, R. (2011). Looks Interesting, but What Does It Do? Evaluation of Incongruent Product Form Depends on Positioning. Journal of Marketing Research, 48(6), 1008–1019.

Marketers struggle with how best to position innovative products that are incongruent with consumer expectations. Compounding the issue, many incongruent products are the result of innovative changes in product form intended to increase hedonic appeal. Crossing various product categories with various positioning tactics in a single meta-analytic framework, the authors find that positioning plays an important role in how consumers evaluate incongruent form. The results demonstrate that when a product is positioned on functional dimensions, consumers show more preferential evaluations for moderately incongruent form than for congruent form. However, when a product is positioned on experiential dimensions, consumers show more preferential evaluations for congruent form than for moderately incongruent form. Importantly, an increase in perceived hedonic benefits mediates the former, whereas a decrease in perceived utilitarian benefits mediates the latter. The mediation effects are consistent with the view that consumers must first understand a product’s functionality before engaging in hedonic consumption.