A successful and superiorly designed product is an important competitive advantage of every brand in today's marketplace, with the help of which they create and retain emotionally attached consumers. Only those consumers, who develope an emotional bond to the brand in a way that the brand reflects their self, are willing to spread positive word-of-mouth to others. In this paper, we want to remind designers and marketers that product design should be approached holistically and has to include all three dimensions: aesthetics, functionality, and symbolism. A product that is superior in appearance, performs better than any other product. It reflects the consumer's unique lifestyle and can have an influence on important consumer behaviors, such as brand attachment and positive word–of–mouth. In the theoretical and research model, the impact of holistic product design on the aforementioned behavioral processes, and the impact of brand attachment on positive word–of–mouth have been analyzed. The study which included 215 individuals confirmed these effects except the influence of the aesthetic dimension on positive word–of–mouth and the influence of the functional dimension on brand attachment, where the impacts have not been confirmed. We have also found that brand attachment is a stronger predictor of positive word–of–mouth than holistic product design. The results suggest two problems with the concepts of brand attachment and positive word–of–mouth: (1) similarity in theoretical definition and (2) similarly designed measurement instrument. Brand attachment has also been shown to be a better predictor of positive word–of–mouth than the functional dimension, suggesting that consumers take the functionality of the product for granted.
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