A qualitative approach to designer as a product cue: proposed conceptual model of consumers perceptions and attitudes

‘Designer as a product cue’, which refers to the information presented about the product regarding the designer of that product, has increasingly been in use by marketers. However, there is a dire need to investigate its effects. Adopting a discovery-oriented grounded theory approach, this study proposes a conceptual model based on the insights gained through 14 semi-structured in-depth interviews about consumers’ evaluations of designer cues. Interview results are presented in four categories: product and consumption context-related issues (e.g. self-expressive potential of the product, product design distinctiveness, public vs private consumption), consumer related issues (e.g. need for uniqueness, perceived value), designer related issues (e.g. designer’s image, credibility) and firm related issues (e.g. company/brand image). Based on qualitative results, product and consumption related regulators as well as consumer and designer characteristics that regulate the processing routes through which designer cue influences consumer outcomes were integrated into a proposed conceptual model. These routes encompass emotional and cognitive paths to product-specific, self-related and company-related outcomes. Through the emotional route, a designer cue may be associated with more distinct states of consumers, such as privilege and sophistication and may lead to self-related outcomes, such as perceptions of social value and symbolic representation of consumer identity. Through the second route, a designer cue may also be associated with more cognition-based outcomes (e.g. product quality, attitude towards the product) as it unearths the intellectual and professional effort behind the product. This cognitive route may predominantly be related to product-specific (e.g. product quality) and company-related outcomes (e.g. company’s design-related image)

Reviewing creativity and innovation research through the strategic HRM lens

Creativity and innovation have been buzzwords of managerial discourse over the last few decades as they contribute to the long-term survival and competitiveness of firms. Given the non-linear, causally ambiguous, and intangible nature of all innovation-related phenomena, management scholars have been trying to uncover factors that contribute to creativity and innovation from multiple lenses ranging from organizational behavior at the micro-level to strategic management at the macro-level. Along with important and insightful developments in these research streams that evolved independently from one another, human resource management (HRM) research – especially from a strategic perspective – has only recently started to contribute to a better understanding of both creativity and innovation. The goal of this chapter is to review the contributions of strategic HRM research to an improved understanding of creativity at the individual-level and innovation at the firm-level. In organizing this review, the authors rely on the open innovation funnel as a metaphor to review research on both HRM practices and HRM systems that contribute to creativity and innovation. In the last section, the authors focus on more recent developments in HRM research that focus on ambidexterity – as a way for HRM to simultaneously facilitate exploration and exploitation. This chapter concludes with a discussion of future research directions