When Users Refuse UserDesigned Products
A new study shows that adopting user design might not always have positive effects for luxury fashion brands. A user-design labeling strategy may harm the sales of brands in the luxury fashion industry. Specifically, the authors find that the demand by consumers for a luxury fashion brand collection decreases if the collection is labeled as user (vs. company) designed.
Emanuela Prandelli (Department of Management and Technology), Cristoph Fuchs (Rotterdam School of Management), Martin Schreier (Wirtschaftsuniversitaet Wien) and Darren Dahl (Sauder School of Business) have published All That Is Users Might Not Be Gold: How Labeling Products as User Designed Backfires in the Context of Luxury Fashion Brands in Journal of Marketing (September 2013, Vol. 77 Issue 5, pages 75-91, doi: 10.1509/jm.11.0330).
Usually it is argued that adopting users' ideas and design for new products brings positive outcomes for firms. However, the final identification of who designed a product (if the user or the firm) might have more complex implications for the market: it can be, in fact, that the source of design affects the consumers' preferences when shopping. Prandelli and her co-authors, therefore, decided to find out if a user-design labeling strategy brings indeed benefits for all type of products. In order to find the answer, four experimental studies were conducted in the context of luxury fashion brands.
The authors make a distinction between mainstream (e.g. H&M) and luxury (e.g. Prada) fashion brands and predict the negative user-design effect for the luxury brands: the user design would fail in signaling the high status sought for by luxury brands' buyers. The findings of the first study provide support to this argument: while mainstream brands (think of Zara or Diesel) experience an increased demand for user-designed products, the opposite happens for the luxury brands such as Gucci or Louis Vuitton. The second study, instead, helps Prandelli and her co-authors in shedding more light on this process. The results show that, for luxury brands, consumers attribute a lower quality and a weaker ability in signaling high status to the user-designed products. These two elements, together, act as mediator in the negative relation between the user-designed source and the product demand.
Nevertheless, there is a good news for luxury fashion companies. The authors, in fact, are able to identify three possible strategies that could help in overcoming this negative effect. The third study proves that if the users are legitimized by the brand's head designer, described as artists or known as celebrities, then consumers evaluate more positively the user-designed label. Moreover, in the last study it is found that this negative effect is attenuated also if the focal product category is less status relevant (for example, t-shirts). To conclude, the findings of this research improve our understanding on when and how involving users makes sense for luxury fashion brands, providing useful insights for their managers and the way they can gain positive outcomes from this strategy.