A study on the application of contemporary visual art into flagship stores of luxury fashion brands

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.Luxury fashion brands face a new challenge as to how to sustain brand growth while maintaining the exclusivity of brands due to the democratisation of the luxury phenomenon which is mainly driven by the emergence of ‘new luxury’ and changes of consumption style ‘trading up’. Luxury consumers are becoming disillusioned with the vulgarisation of luxury goods and prefer exclusive luxurious experiences. In order to keep pace with the changes in luxury consumer needs and promote an image with creative and luxurious connotations, luxury brands increasingly associate with contemporary visual art through diverse kinds of channels. Among the channels, great attention has been given to contemporary visual art exhibitions within a flagship store due to its benefits: geographical location, cutting investment cost and offering direct art experience to consumers. However, there is no theoretical research investigating the main points to be considered in applying contemporary visual art exhibitions to flagship stores of luxury fashion brands. Moreover, there is a need for a systematic approach in applying contemporary visual art exhibitions to flagship stores of luxury fashion brands as relying mainly on a designer’s intuition might pose a problem: delivering different messages from those intended. Through the research, four main propositions were identified which need to be considered when luxury fashion brands apply contemporary visual art exhibitions to their flagship stores: 1) brand communication with consumers, 2) the fit between brand identity and that of an artist, 3) consumers’ value/benefits in the way that enhance consumers’ aesthetic experience of art and 4) artists’ value/benefits. Models including a conceptual model and a design tool kit were developed and tested with experts in this field. The proposed models are decision supporting tools which provide a comprehensive overview regarding the main points to be considered as well as support finding a high fit artist to brand identity. They offer advantages as follows: 1) the conceptual framework improves understanding of the needs/values of the three main stake holders such as luxury fashion brands, consumers and artists for this practice and provides an insight into how to address them in applying contemporary visual art exhibitions to flagship stores of luxury fashion brands 2) the tool kit assists in making a decision when selecting artists or artworks and offers benefits to all the stake holders: 1) luxury brand value by managing their touch points effectively that ultimately lead to enhancing brand communication, 2) consumer value by preventing confusion caused by disharmonious messages from all the touch points within flagship stores, and 3) artist value by finding a matched brand for synergy between brands and artists

girl.is.a.four.letter.word The Collective Practices of Amateur Self-Imag(in)ing and Personal Website Production 1996 to 2001

Scholarship on the practices of young gender-marginalized people online is a burgeoning theme within internet studies and feminist media studies. Within historical scholarship of the internet, young women’s practices have been critically neglected. In feminist art history, feminist practices with emerging technology are abundant but young women making art on and with the web is not. Given the aforementioned gaps, this dissertation aims to expand the interdisciplinary fields of internet studies, feminist media studies, and feminist art history through a genealogy of a conjunctural moment of the world wide web. The thesis title presents the breadth of this project: the erased and forgotten web-based work, specifically the self-imaging practices, of young women who used proto-social media forms in the process, creation, and circulation of production between 1996 and 2001. Demanding a synthesis of critical skills operating within the fields mentioned above, it aims to do so through a phenomenological and affect theory analysis of self-images that appeared on personal websites. It argues that these self-imagi(ni)ng practices serve as (a) tactical methods in reaction to patriarchal regimes of power and s/censorship, (b) a means of engendering the sociality of trauma as a productive orientation, and (c) communicative nodes that through wit(h)nessing reshape a feminist intimate public into a new genre of friendship predicated on the aesthetics and forms of circulation of the work. Most internet analysis misses the aforementioned politically engaged feminist history and its influence on how we use and conceptualize the web today. The project’s objective is to provide a philosophical genealogy of the web, demanding a more politically feminist espousal of it, both in theory and practice

Palvelumuotoilulla makua - Nimisuojatuotteet Pohjois-Savon ruokamatkailun

Palvelumuotoilu on koko ajan kehittyvä ala, jossa hyödynnetään teollisen muotoilun perinteisiä menetelmiä. Palvelumuotoilun menetelmiä käytetään yritysten ja yhteisöjen toimintojen parantamisessa sekä mielekkäämmän asiakaskokemuksen luomisessa. Palvelumuotoilua voi käyttää nimisuojan nostamiseksi tunnetuksi ja tuomaan arvoa yrityksen toiminnalle sekä asiakaskokemukselle. Kuitenkin, yritysten tietämättömyys nimisuojasta asettaa haasteita perinneruokien näkyvyydelle. Tässä tutkimuksessa palvelumuotoiluprosessi muodostetaan case-tapahtuman ja siihen liittyvän nimisuojatuotteiden tarpeen kartoittamisella. Tavoitteena on ymmärtää nimisuojaprosessin mahdollisuudet ja luonne. Tutkimus toteutetaan tapaustutkimuksena yhdessä Pohjois-Savon alueen toimijoiden kanssa. Tuloksena tutkimuksessa syntyi viiden kohdan avulla muodostettu palvelumuotoiluprosessi. Tuloksena syntyi myös selvitys Pohjois-Savon alueen tuotteiden nimisuojakonseptien ja palvelupolun esimerkeistä.Service design is a developing field which uses methods from traditional industrial design. Methods of service design are used to develop better services for companies and communities and to get better understanding to create better user experience. Service design can be used to increase knowledge of protected products and to get more value for company and user experience. However, companies have a lack of knowledge about protecting products which creates challenges for visibility of the traditional food products. This research creates service design process around a case study and expresses the needs for protecting traditional food products. The aim of this study is to get understanding about the opportunities and the nature of protected products. This research is carried out by a case study together with companies of the Northern Savonia area. The main result of this research is a five step service design process. In addition, results of this research are examples about the protected product concepts and the fiction of customer journey in Northern Savonia

Design revolutions: IASDR 2019 Conference Proceedings. Volume 3: People

In September 2019 Manchester School of Art at Manchester Metropolitan University was honoured to host the bi-annual conference of the International Association of Societies of Design Research (IASDR) under the unifying theme of DESIGN REVOLUTIONS. This was the first time the conference had been held in the UK. Through key research themes across nine conference tracks – Change, Learning, Living, Making, People, Technology, Thinking, Value and Voices – the conference opened up compelling, meaningful and radical dialogue of the role of design in addressing societal and organisational challenges. This Volume 3 includes papers from People track of the conference

The influence of social eWOM information on attitude formation for aesthetic products, the case of fine art

This research aims to further our understanding about the influence of eWOM communication on consumers' decision-making process and its effects on the development of aesthetic product attitudes in an online social context. The growing number of studies that explore the influence of online WOM information on consumer decision-making still presents a lack of understanding in specific consumption contexts.;This requires further theoretical development on the modality in which eWOM communication retrieved from social platforms alters the decision-processes in emotionally rich consumption contexts. Accordingly, given aesthetic product typology's recent market trends, and art in particular, which saw a shift from predominantly offline consumption towards online mediated channels, fine art has been chosen as the subject of the current study as the prototypical example of an aesthetic good.;A mixed-method approach within a pragmatic philosophical stance was deemed most suitable to explore the research problem. The lack of research within the area called for an initial qualitative method of data collection in the form of in-depth interviews. A total of 28 in-depth interviews were carried out with different groups of stakeholders, such as commercial galleries, consumers, artists etc. This phase of the study helped pare down the number of variables to be included in the model and offered an indication of the experimental design requirements.;The primary phrase of research consisted of a quantitative data collection in the form of an online administrated experiment. This stage sought to test the developed product attitude formation model, accounting for the influence of social eWOM information. A total of 426 responses were collected, and data were subjected to statistical analyses, specifically analyses of variance and SEM.;The findings of this research highlight several contributions to theory, which advances our understanding of how consumers form product attitudes in an online social context, particularly attitudes towards aesthetic products.;Firstly, this study found that the attitude a consumer develops about an aesthetic product in an information-rich context is not pre-determined by the product typology, but depends on consumer-specific factors. In this instance, eWOM information enters the process as cognitive input and induces a shift in product preferences that suppress the influence of affect that was previously considered of paramount importance.;Secondly, the study highlights the importance of the purchase motivations of the consumer as, these act upon the extent of influence that eWOM information has on product attitude. Thirdly, the study identified the specific dimensions of eWOM that exhibit a differential impact upon product attitude development. Fourthly, a new theoretical model that accounts for the aesthetic product attitude formation process was developed and defined by the variables that exert an influence on the process in an online social context.;The results of this study provide several managerial recommendations that help inform marketing practice, given the pervasive adoption of social media for following and purchasing aesthetic products.This research aims to further our understanding about the influence of eWOM communication on consumers' decision-making process and its effects on the development of aesthetic product attitudes in an online social context. The growing number of studies that explore the influence of online WOM information on consumer decision-making still presents a lack of understanding in specific consumption contexts.;This requires further theoretical development on the modality in which eWOM communication retrieved from social platforms alters the decision-processes in emotionally rich consumption contexts. Accordingly, given aesthetic product typology's recent market trends, and art in particular, which saw a shift from predominantly offline consumption towards online mediated channels, fine art has been chosen as the subject of the current study as the prototypical example of an aesthetic good.;A mixed-method approach within a pragmatic philosophical stance was deemed most suitable to explore the research problem. The lack of research within the area called for an initial qualitative method of data collection in the form of in-depth interviews. A total of 28 in-depth interviews were carried out with different groups of stakeholders, such as commercial galleries, consumers, artists etc. This phase of the study helped pare down the number of variables to be included in the model and offered an indication of the experimental design requirements.;The primary phrase of research consisted of a quantitative data collection in the form of an online administrated experiment. This stage sought to test the developed product attitude formation model, accounting for the influence of social eWOM information. A total of 426 responses were collected, and data were subjected to statistical analyses, specifically analyses of variance and SEM.;The findings of this research highlight several contributions to theory, which advances our understanding of how consumers form product attitudes in an online social context, particularly attitudes towards aesthetic products.;Firstly, this study found that the attitude a consumer develops about an aesthetic product in an information-rich context is not pre-determined by the product typology, but depends on consumer-specific factors. In this instance, eWOM information enters the process as cognitive input and induces a shift in product preferences that suppress the influence of affect that was previously considered of paramount importance.;Secondly, the study highlights the importance of the purchase motivations of the consumer as, these act upon the extent of influence that eWOM information has on product attitude. Thirdly, the study identified the specific dimensions of eWOM that exhibit a differential impact upon product attitude development. Fourthly, a new theoretical model that accounts for the aesthetic product attitude formation process was developed and defined by the variables that exert an influence on the process in an online social context.;The results of this study provide several managerial recommendations that help inform marketing practice, given the pervasive adoption of social media for following and purchasing aesthetic products

A Designer’s Approach: Exploring how Autistic Adults with Additional Learning Disabilities Experience their Home Environment

Autistic adults with limited speech and additional learning disabilities are people whose perceptions and interactions with their environment are unique, but whose experiences are under-explored in design research. This PhD by Practice investigates how people with autism experience their home environment through a collaboration with the autism charity Kingwood Trust, which gave the designer extensive access to a community of autistic adults that it supports. The PhD reflects upon a neurotypical designer’s approach to working with autistic adults to investigate their relationship with the environment. It identifies and develops collaborative design tools for autistic adults, their support staff and family members to be involved. The PhD presents three design studies that explore a person’s interaction with three environmental contexts of the home i.e. garden, everyday objects and interiors. A strengths-based rather than a deficit-based approach is adopted which draws upon an autistic person’s sensory preferences, special interests and action capabilities, to unravel what discomfort and delight might mean for an autistic person; this approach is translated into three design solutions to enhance their experience at home. By working beyond the boundaries of a neurotypical culture, the PhD bridges the autistic and neurotypical worlds of experience and draws upon what the mainstream design field can learn from designing with autistic people with additional learning disabilities. It also provides insights into the subjective experiences of people who have very different ways of seeing, doing and being in the environmen