How to imbue products with symbolic meaning

Many people pay silly money to wear a particular logo or a designer brand. Of course, a designer outfit doesn't keep you any warmer or dryer than an unbranded one, but functionality is only part of the story. Designer products say something about you – you are a trendy, sexy or sophisticated person. Brands help us to express who we think we are and who we want to be.

Big name brands are an integral part of our lives, says Davide Ravasi, associate professor in the Institute of Strategic Management of Bocconi University, Italy. Whether its Levi jeans, BMW cars or Nokia phones, we know the brands we like. These are more than products; they are symbols, or in other words, they are objects carrying meaning.

In a recent ESF Exploratory Workshop convened by Ravasi, scholars of various disciplines within the social sciences discussed how symbolic attributes of products affect their adoption and evolution.

The idea that goods and services hold symbolic as well as functional value has been recognised for decades, but is still poorly understood in the context of business management. Management theory and practice tends to focus on business processes: the most efficient and economic way to deliver good quality, functional products. Indeed, management studies prefer to shy away from “wishy-washy” topics like branding, considering it more of a sloppy marketing concept.

“Branding is just one way of endowing products with meanings. But there are others, such as product design or even process innovation.” explains Ravasi, “However, little research has been done on how business processes and activities, like customer service and production, can systematically create symbolic value in products. This is such an unexplored field that we don't even have our terms and definitions and methodologies agreed on yet. The workshop was just the beginning of researchers in this field to come together and start work on developing a common language and concepts.”

The importance of this research agenda cannot be underestimated. Europe has already lost its competitive advantage in terms of cost, quality or product innovation. Goods from China and other emerging economies are now cheap and of high quality. Moreover, manufacturers in these countries are beginning to develop new products and innovate, not just copy western goods.

Major technological breakthroughs and cheaper manufacturing are not the only way to grab market share. The mere redesign of the outer shells of hearing aids – introducing sleek lines, translucent plastics and a range of colours and patterns instead of the usual flesh colour – helped Oticon, a Danish leader in the production of hearing aids, relieve hearing-impaired children from the psychological burden associated with carrying a hearing aid. Ten years after its launch, OtiKids were still the hearing aid of choice of most support groups for parents of hearing impaired children.

Many European companies evidently know about good design – design that goes beyond ergonomics. Consequently European goods and services can still compete at the symbolic level, offering prestige, social status and fulfilling experiences to consumers. “You can encode meaning into products through careful design that will elicit certain interpretations in people,” says Ravasi,” and we want to understand the business processes that enable this encoding to happen and how to increase the likelihood that certain forms will be decoded in particular ways.”

One of the first avenues of research will investigate the role of “cultural capital”, one of the first technical terms agreed on by the researchers. Cultural capital is a special knowledge that some companies have about how goods are embedded in cultural conventions and expressions, and how they relate to consumers' lifestyles. It seems to play a critical role in how businesses understand the connections between objects and their meanings. But no-one really understands how cultural capital is accumulated or deployed in organisations when designing new products.

Another idea that was considered during the workshop was the crucial role of consumers in shaping symbolic value and at the importance of incorporating more explicitly consumers and consumption in managerial models.

“As a group of scholars we are trying to generate new forms of management knowledge, giving enterprises more awareness of the importance of symbolic value so they do not underestimate the resources and competitive advantage they have,” Ravasi concludes.

Source: European Science Foundation

Related stories:

Good news for veggies: Personal values deceive taste buds
Many heavy meat eaters believe they eat a lot of meat because of the taste. But according to groundbreaking new research in the Journal of Consumer Research, the reason that a beef burger tastes better than a veggie burger to some people has more to do with values than actual taste.
Researchers Study Coastal Hazards of Increasing Wave Heights, Rising Sea Levels
(PhysOrg.com) -- While hurricanes Gustav and Ike were pummeling the Gulf Coast with rains and record flooding, researchers at Oregon State University were studying why wave heights in the Pacific Ocean have been increasing in recent years and how this phenomenon –coupled with global warming – might affect coastal erosion, flooding and development along the Pacific Northwest coast.
Satellites collect data on sea temperatures, reefs
(AP) -- Satellites are helping scientists expand a virtual network to watch for increases in ocean temperatures that can damage or kill the fragile ecosystems of coral reefs worldwide.
YouTube flips switch on new sales channel
(AP) -- Online video leader YouTube has opened up its version of a home shopping network in its latest effort to wring more revenue from its massive audience and justify the $1.76 billion that Google Inc. paid for the site two years ago.
Economists: Tough measures needed to cure economic ills
(PhysOrg.com) -- An ailing financial industry is going to need strong medicine to pull out of a deepening credit crunch brought on by risky loans and deregulation, Purdue University economists said Monday.
Myth busted: Some drugs do cost more in Canada
(PhysOrg.com) -- Canada may be recognized as a bargain hunters' paradise for prescription drugs, but a new U of T study suggests that many generic medications may be more expensive in Canada than in the U.S. The uninsured consumers who purchases their own medications may save money by comparing prices of their specific prescriptions within Canada and in the U.S.
Feeding your body's defenses against cancer
David Servan-Schreiber was 31 when he was diagnosed with a walnut-size brain tumor and given 6 months to live. After surgery and chemotherapy, the young neuroscientist asked his oncologist if he should change his diet.
Are we spending too much on health?
In this poor economic climate and period of lower growth is it time to consider limiting spending on healthcare budgets? Two experts debate the issue on bmj.com today.

News discussion:

General Science news