Excited to share our new paper forthcoming at the Journal of Consumer Research, led by first author Lauren Min, an assistant professor at The University of Kansas School of Business, and coauthored with Cary Anderson, PhD, graduate from the University of Pittsburgh Katz Graduate School of Business. We were inspired by seeing minimalist product designs all over the marketplace - fairly plain t-shirts, water bottles, bags, plates, and so on. We were struck by this feeling that it felt disconcerting to be paying so much for products with such visually simple surface aesthetics, even though we often personally liked these simple designs. What did we find in this research? First, we find that consumers believe that products with visually simple aesthetics cost less to produce than those with visually complex aesthetics. This lay belief occurs more strongly in comparative contexts - when consumers evaluate visually simple and complex product versions next to each other. Why does this lay belief matter? We find that consumers are not willing to pay as much for product versions with visually simple aesthetics as for product versions with visually complex aesthetics, even when they actually like the visually simple design more. We also find that consumers believe it is unfair to price the visually simple product design higher than the visually complex product design. One way to reduce the gap in willingness to pay is to inform consumers that both the visually simple and visually complex products cost the same amount of time and effort to produce. In fact, many designers know that good design is often as much about subtracting elements as it is about adding elements, such that visual simplicity in design doesn’t always mean less time and effort. Read more at: https://lnkd.in/eq-w8Zf2 University of Pittsburgh University of Pittsburgh Katz Graduate School of Business University of Pittsburgh College of Business Administration #marketing #minimalism #products #design
Great work, congrats!
Geoffrey Colon
5mo
Interesting. Excited to dig into this. I wonder if this leads to a more “maximalist” design effort in a way to capitalize on this research? Thank you in advance Peggy, Lauren and Cary.
Arianna Uhalde
5mo
Love it!
John Lynch
5mo
Way to go Lauren Min and Peggy Liu
Charly Edmonds
5mo
Congratulations!
Congratulations 🎉
Murali Mantrala
5mo
Congratulations!
Alexander Mafael
5mo
Really fascinating obersvations!
Congrats, Peggy! I look forward to reading the paper.
Higher Education Marketing, Design, Communications Creative Strategist | Professor
5moAnd speaking from the designer-creator perspective, it is easier and quicker to produce - plus most of us love minimalistic approaches - “less is more!”