ABSTRACT
Practitioners argue that product design is rapidly emerging as a determinant of marketplace success (Miller & Adler, 2003), in part because design can serve as a point of di erentiation at a time when it is increasingly di cult to gain competitive advantage on the basis of price or reliability (Jordan, omas, & McClelland, 1996; Kalins, 2003). Design is also poised to become a topic of greater interest to consumer researchers due to a developing transformation in decision paradigms. Decision research historically has focused on salient verbal information at the expense of nonverbal cues. However, there is a growing belief that decisions are driven by “gut-level” reactions unrelated to the objective merits of the alternatives under consideration (see Loewenstein, 2001; Loewenstein, Weber, Hsee, & Welch, 2001). We argue that product design can provoke a variety of cognitive and noncognitive reactions that can guide decision making in ways not currently appreciated. Our intent is to describe some fundamental constructs, speculate about their implications for product preference, and map directions for future research.
