Although the strategic importance of design for creating strong brands has been known for some time, studies on marketing have neglected to investigate the relationship between design and brand.

On the basis of sign- and cognitive-scientific theories, Robert Kreuzbauer develops an approach to explain the influence of design on brand perception and the storage of brand knowledge. He integrates the latest theories on form perception and cognitive knowledge representation and shows how salient product form attributes (brand identifiers) shape the entire brand. The author also presents a detailed discussion of diverse methods for identifying salient brand design attributes.

Autorentext

Dr. Robert Kreuzbauer promovierte bei Prof. Dr. Hans Mühlbacher am Institut für Wertprozessmanagement, Abteilung Marketing der Universität Innsbruck. Heute ist Berater bei der Kiska GmbH, einem führenden europäischen Design-Unternehmen.

Inhalt
Content.- A. Introduction.- 1. The Problem.- 2. Structure of the Dissertation.- B. Theoretical Part.- I. General Brand Conceptions.- II. Approaches to Brand Formation.- III. General Considerations of Brand Semiosis and Brand Communication.- IV. Cognitive Processes of Brand Formation.- C. Methods for Determining Brand Identifiers.- I. General Difficulties.- II. Requirements for a Method to Determine Brand Identifiers.- III. Methods of Data Collection for Determining Attribute-Values.- IV. Content Analysis for Determining Brand Frames.- V. Evaluation of Content Analysis:.- VI. Experiments for Determining Default Attribute-Values (=Brand Identifiers).- D. Final Comments and Summary.- I. Limitations.- II. Further Research.- III. Summary.- E. Appendix:.- F. References:.