Competing through brand style: A systematic approach to explain style strategies in product design

Abstract

Brands selling consumer products are known to strategically use a distinct and consistent style or design language across their portfolios, in order to communicate their brand identities and differentiate themselves from competitors. However, these styles vary from brand to brand, and across consumer product categories as well. How can a brand’s style strategy be defined, what factors affect the choice of a particular strategy, and how can designers decode these strategies? This paper unravels answers to these questions, and proposes a framework. The framework juxtaposes category-level and brand-level factors with brand style parameters, paving the way for understanding and explaining brand style strategies. It is assessed using pilot case studies. An important insight is that the array of influencing factors often have contradictory effects, opening up interesting opportunities for future research.

Keywords:

• Design strategy
• design language
• industrial design
• product design
• brand style

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Shoubhik Dutta Roy

Shoubhik Dutta Roy is an Associate Professor of Product Design at MIT Institute of Design (a constituent of MIT-ADT University), Pune, India. He received his MDes in industrial design from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur. He worked with some of the leading design studios in India, successfully executing design projects for renowned brands of consumer products. His body of work ranges from home appliances to packaging. After several years of professional practice, he shifted to the academic world, seeking to bridge the gap between industry and academia. His research interests revolve around product form, brand design language, product semantics and emotive design, with particular emphasis on practical implications in design practice.

Wricha Mishra

Wricha Mishra is an Associate Professor and Head of the Department of User Experience Design at MIT Institute of Design (a constituent of MIT-ADT University), Pune, India. She completed her Doctoral studies from National Institute of Industrial Engineering (NITIE), Mumbai. Her research interest primarily revolves around Design Management, Human Factors, Human Computer Interaction, User Experience Design Methodologies and Health Informatics. Her domain of consultancy projects is on Health Informatics, Human Computer interaction and Design Management. She has edited several books on Human Computer Interaction.