Anne Tomes

User groups in action: The management of user inputs in the NPD process

Abstract This paper describes, through a case study of a small software company, an instance of the successful employment of user groups as a medium of design. Our work indicates that effective user groups require the product development manager to accomplish a number of relatively distinct social processes. These include establishing trust and credibility, managing expressions of user need, and involving users in the new product development process by enlisting them as designers. The implications of the findings are that participative models of the design process make demands on the social skills of product development managers which need to be addressed in their education and subsequent career development.

Art and accountability: the languages of design and managerial control

To hard‐pressed managements in competitive product markets, the aesthetic design of products appears to offer an attractive means of creating competitive advantage. In this situation, researchers on design management are beginning to construct forms of accountability for design so as to guarantee its impact on the market in advance. There are parallels between this initiative and the encroachment of audit controls in the public services. Drawing on theoretical resources developed in the body of research on this ‘audit explosion’, this paper argues that these attempts to subject the design process to audit involve a redefinition of the ‘language’ through which it communicates. Insofar as the result is to subordinate design’s languages of form texture and colour to audit’s languages of words and number, the result is likely to be a self‐defeating reduction of design to rehearsals of the banal, the cliched and the bland.

Using consumers' perceptions for the cognitive analysis of corporate-level competitive structurse

As the battle for future growth in saturated and post-saturated industries and markets intensifies, competitors must develop the means for ensuring that they maintain the loyalty of their existing customers, whilst seeking to attract new customers from rival firms. To this end, the present paper reports the findings of an empirical investigation which explored consumers’ mental models of competitive structures in the UK grocery retail industry. A similarity tree analysis was performed in conjunction with non-metric multidimensional scaling, in order to reveal the bases on which consumers differentiate various competitors. The findings suggest that consumers distinguish two groups of competing stores, primarily on the basis of quality and convenience. The competitive structure identified through the cognitive analysis was validated using various behavioural, attitudinal, demographic and socioeconomic indicators. It is argued that the analysis of consumers’ mental models of corporate level competitive struc...

Mapping Consumers′ Cognitive Structures: A Comparison of Similarity Trees with Multidimensional Scaling and Cluster Analysis

Multidimensional scaling and cluster analysis techniques are commonly employed for the analysis of consumer perceptions of products. However, within the past 10‐15 years, a growing volume of research has shown that the processes underlying similarities judgements of stimuli are incompatible with the fundamental underlying axioms of these techniques. A series of papers in the psychometrics and cognitive psychology literatures by Tversky and his associates have demonstrated the inability of these procedures to handle similarities data from many domains by virtue of the restrictive assumptions they impose on the data. Recently, several procedures have been proposed that overcome the limitations of traditional multidimensional scaling and cluster analysis techniques. The potential benefits are illustrated of applying two of these newer techniques, additive similarity trees (ADDTREE) and extended similarity trees (EXTREE) in the context of marketing research. Consumers′ similarity judgements data are presented from three disparate product domains (newspapers, shops and breakfast cereals). In each case, non‐metric multidimensional scaling and average linkage cluster analysis yield less interpretable solutions than ADDTREE. In the case of the newspapers data, much richer insights are obtained with reference to EXTREE. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications for market research studies and the development of consumer behaviour theory.

Design, Words and History

Every dominant movement in art has depended upon the development of an accompanying critical discourse. Using the writings of design critics and design journalists, this paper suggests that there are similar, albeit under-developed, discursive dimensions to the reception of innovative design. Critics, advertisers and commentators offer vocabularies of appreciation analogous to the critical discourses of artistic avant-gardes. These suggest the manner in which a design should be used or experienced, the nature of experiences that should follow, and the discontents with earlier forms that inspired it. A major implication is that the lukewarm enthusiasm of the UK public for good design is unlikely to be overcome simply by exposure to it. Good design, of some kinds at least, can no more be expected to speak for itself than good art. It needs to be approached with some understanding of what it sets out to do, what is to be gained by engaging with it, motivated where appropriate by a new sensitivity to the shortcomings of what went before. Except amongst those already inclined to value design innovation, such frames of mind are unlikely to arise spontaneously. They depend on the promulgation of appropriate vocabularies of appreciation from within the relevant design communities, and these, like the discourses of modern art, will need to possess a critical and historical dimension.

Accessing User Worlds for Product Concepts

The idea generation stage is probably the least understood aspect of the ‘fuzzy front end’ of new product development (Khurana and Rosenthal, 1997). One approach to understanding it - and to managing it - is through the study of those individuals who have a record of encountering the ‘lucky accident’ of successful new product ideas. The paper draws on two case studies of successful product innovation which describe the importance of the interaction between users and a scientist-entrepreneur. These suggest that a key success factor may be an unusual combination of an object-fixated ‘collectors’ attitude to technologies, in which these are decontextualized and valued for their own sake, combined with an appetite for the social exchanges involved in exploring the world of the user.

The marketing of a community service

This paper investigates the value of a marketing framework in the development of a community service; namely the finding of worthwhile permanent jobs for people with a mental handicap in the Sheffield area. The attitudes and practices of local employers to people with a mental handicap are investigated. On the basis of the findings recommendations are drawn up for the marketing of this service.