Hedonic and symbolic consumption perceived values: opportunities for innovators and designers in the fields of brand and product design

This paper's objective is to stress the interest for both innovators and designers of a marketing concept that has been widely explored since the early 80's in the fields of customer behaviour and brand management. Indeed, the concept of hedonic perceived value, as defined by Holbrook and Hirschmann (1982), has provided marketers with a more complete understanding of consumption experiences. We argue that innovators and designers, could better assess the potentiality and viability of their ideas or projects, as early as during the conception phase of new brands and products, by taking into account the findings of a marketing study on hedonic and symbolic brand value perception which we present here. Firstly, we draw upon the hedonic and symbolic perceived value in the marketing literature. We then discuss the results of our survey, conducted in a French mass-consumption context, investigating the brand choice process of 251 customers among 3 product categories and 9 brands. We use tools initially developed by marketers to analyse the various dimensions of perceived brand value to explore their influence on customer-brand relationship and customer behaviour. Our findings show that both industrial brands and retailer brands can be valued in terms of hedonic and symbolic benefits. In an attempt to identify bridges between current brand management research and today's innovation and design issues, we indicate theoretical and managerial implications emphasizing the interest of interactions between designers, marketers and prospects or users during the conception phase of brands or products life cycle.