Those Exaggerated Prototypes Designed to Capture the Consumer

THEY GENERATE BUZZ AROUND THE BRAND AND PREPARE THE PUBLIC FOR UPCOMING STYLE AND DESIGN INNOVATIONS. BUT THEY MUST NOT CANNIBALIZE EXISTING PRODUCTS. FROM CONCEPT CARS TO FASHION CATWALKS, EACH INDUSTRY HAS ITS OWN PROTOTYPICAL STRATEGY

by Paola Cillo and Irene Scopelliti, Dept. of Management and Technology, Bocconi
Translated by Alex Foti


Surely many people will have been caught off guard by the recent Gucci fashion show set in an surgery room and wondered what the purpose was and who could ever wear those extravagant clothes. Yet, the Gucci fashion show is not an isolated case. Eccentric or explosive prototypes are used in many sectors, from automobiles to consumer electronics, from design to fashion. The goal is not only to generate interest around the brand or attract market and media coverage. Prototypes play a different role according to the industry and context where they are employed.
 
In some industries, such as fashion, the presentation of exaggerated prototypes allows the market to become familiar with new items and is therefore a necessary condition to accelerate the acceptance of production innovation. In other contexts, however, extreme prototypes create value for the brand, projecting it into a futuristic dimension, thus increasing the value that the market attributes to the branded products that are actually on sale. This is what happens, for example, in the automotive industry. These conclusions emerge from a series studies I conducted together with David Mazursky of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Fashion innovations exist on a path of planned obsolescence. A stylistic innovation is often shelved by the following season in favor of a different style, in order to encourage consumers to renew their wardrobes. However consumers have a natural tendency to be slow in adapting to change and, above all, they need time to be able to get used from a perceptual point of view to what is innovative compared to the dominant standard. The over-the-top prototype shouts out the message that an important innovation is being presented to market, making it more easily intelligible.

The experiments we carried out show that it is possible to accelerate the acceptance of a new design in the fashion industry, by first exposing the consumer to an exaggerated version of the same design. Exposure to the hyperbolic version allows the consumer to start decoding some visual elements contained in the prototype. When these elements are subsequently added to the product being actually marketed, the consumer perceives a sense of familiarity and is more willing to make the purchase. It is as if the exaggerated prototype left a trace in the memory of the consumer who, subconsciously, is more favorably oriented toward the purchase of the new item launched in stores, sold in a more moderate version with respect to what was displayed on the catwalk. Studies have also shown that exaggerated prototypes also act as facilitators for non-experts, especially when there is a high visual redundancy between the characteristics of the prototype and those of the marketed product.

On the other hand, so-called concept cars in the automotive world play a different role with respect to the fashion industry. With their futuristic shapes and their peculiarly advanced performance, they build a strong association between the brand and innovation in the mind of the consumer. Obviously, in this case the risk exists that the concept car could dilute the value of existing car models on sale, making them less attractive to consumers. Our studies show that car companies resort to different strategies to avoid the risk of diluting the value of products available on the market. These strategies are all based on a single principle: to position the prototype according to variables that are incomparable with those of existing automobiles, for example by focusing on extravagantly designed models which are therefore hard to assess in the light of existing aesthetic standards. Our experimental studies show how, in the automotive industry, as well as in consumer electronics, strategies that make prototypes and products on the market difficult to compare between one another allow companies to maximize the value of hyperbolic prototypes without risking to reduce consumer interest in existing products.