Carolina Consolación Segura

A framework for designing new products and services

Customer satisfaction is an important objective in all areas of business and services. A key issue in todays design activities is to achieve customer satisfaction in an economical way by finding the attributes that are most valuable to customers. In this paper we propose a formal and efficient methodology to design a new service, which is an improvement on a platform service. We propose a methodology to link two tools - the statistical design of experiments (SDE), for data collection, and quality function deployment (QFD), for the development of conceptual alternatives. The focus is only on functional dimensions, but it can be used in symbolic and aesthetic dimensions. The study uses a recent survey on the development of an operations management course curriculum to illustrate the conjoint methodology.

How a sustainable message affects brand attributes

© Emerald Group Publishing Limited. Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to understand how an advertising campaign incorporating an ecological message affects heuristic structure of consumer preferences for hedonic (design and aesthetics) and utilitarian benefits (functionality and performance) provided by the product advertised. Also, the second objective is to reach an understanding of how brand equity moderates these relationships. Design/methodology/approach - The paper proposes a two-stage study: a qualitative and exploratory part, in which the authors seek to determine the most important hedonic and utilitarian attributes as well as strong and weak brands, and a quantitative and causative part to test the hypothesis proposed. Findings - The results show that when the brand advertised incorporates an ecological message, consumers show a greater preference for hedonic attributes than when the advertisement does not incorporate this message. On the other hand when the brand incorporating the sustainable message is weaker, consumers show a greater preference for hedonic attributes than when it is stronger. Practical implications - The result shows important managerial implications for companies with weaker brands, since it indicates that it is much more profitable, in terms of consumers perceived usefulness, to invest in social and ecological actions than stronger brands. Originality/value - Analyse how the used of ecological messages can modify consumers heuristic according to utilitarian and hedonics attributes.