| In a time when companies are able to match each other on dimensions of quality and price, superior design is seen as a key to winning customers. But while design has been an area of growing concern, it remains unclear whether superior design should be a goal sought after by all. Through the course of four studies, this dissertation examines the effect of visually attractive product design upon consumers' perceptions of quality and argues that under certain circumstances, companies might be adversely impacted in pursuit of highly attractive visual design.;The goal of Study 1 is to examine the relationship between visual product attractiveness, brand reputation, processing capabilities and perceived performance. I find that when processing capabilities are unconstrained, there is a positive relationship between visual attractiveness and perceived performance for highly reputed brands but an inverted U-shaped relationship for weakly reputed brands. When processing capabilities are constrained, there is a positive relationship between visual attractiveness and perceived performance regardless of the level of brand information. Study 2 tests the robustness of the proposed model by demonstrating that the inverted U-shaped relationship between visual attractiveness occurs in the presence of other extrinsic product information such as country-of-origin reputation. Study 3, seeks to examine the processing mechanisms involved in the previous studies by measuring participants' response latencies and shows that these judgments of performance are made very quickly, except when a product of high visual attractiveness is accompanied by weak extrinsic information, such as weak brand reputation. Finally, Study 4 tests the boundary conditions of the observed phenomena by examining whether or not the same pattern of results hold true for products that are primarily hedonic (versus functional) and finds that contrary to the results in the previous three studies, for hedonic products there only seems be a positive relationship between visual attractiveness and perceived performance.;This dissertation speaks widely to the diverse community involved in product design decisions. By understanding the boundary conditions within which this effect operates, we can work toward informing both marketers and designers of the possible perils of an excessive detail to a product's visual design. |
