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The concept design-driven innovation focuses on innovating product meanings. It has been studied from a variety of perspectives and contexts since the early 2000s. However, a complete overview of the literature published in this area is currently missing. The purpose of this study is to provide a comprehensive understanding of how design-driven innovation contributes to value creation in product development.

In this systematic literature review, 57 papers and book chapters that cover design-driven innovation were identified and analyzed. An iterative coding process was followed to derive five facets of design-driven innovation that contribute to value creation.

Design-driven innovation creates value by focusing on the intangible values of products. The following five facets of design-driven innovation that contribute to value creation were identified: development of new product meanings, knowledge generation, actors and collaborations, capabilities and process. These facets and their interrelations are presented in a theoretical framework.

The main practical implication of this study is that it is now clear that the five facets of design-driven innovation are interrelated and reinforce each other. Therefore, companies need to approach design-driven innovation from a holistic perspective.

This paper contributes to theory by presenting the theoretical framework that provides an overview of available knowledge and that creates a context for future research.

The innovation of meaning paradigm is a strategy to radically innovate product and service meanings. While researchers have focussed on the role of product and retail space meanings as interlinked in the pursuit of innovation, no investigation has been directed towards understanding when the two meanings differ. This research explores how companies can manage two different meanings offered through their retail services and the products sold.

Due to the highly intangible and subjective nature of meaning, as well as the exploratory aim of the research, a case study approach has been adopted. In particular, the research compares two case studies of similar companies in the beauty industry. Data were triangulated across three different sources: a panel of experts, ethnographic research in the two companies' stores and extensive academic and practitioner publications.

Findings suggest that innovating the service meaning can be a viable strategy to differentiate a retail offering the product meaning which is no longer perceived as different with respect to competitors.

The study applies the innovation of meaning concept to retail services, distinguishing the meaning given to the store from that given to products, thereby offering managers a strategy to innovate a suffering retail format.

The impact of colour is acknowledged, yet empirical studies on colours with marketing implications are rare. The paper seeks to advance our understanding of the role of package colours in consumers' product experiences by studying the relationship between colour meanings and product. It also aims at offering insights into the meanings associated with colours in a product context.

Understanding of package colours was elicited by applying the preference‐consumption difference interview technique. The data were analysed applying means‐end chain. Accordingly, it was possible to detect, not only the multifunction played by package colours, but also meanings that colours conveyed at different abstraction level. As colour research within marketing was fragmented and no such colour theory exists, the paper developed a theoretical framework for the paper.

Based on the evidence, the proposed framework is further elaborated so that it could better capture the connections between colour and consumers' product experiences. Hence, the paper supports the significance of the functions emphasised by past research and uncovers the qualitative connections between packages colour meanings and product type.

Future research should extend the size of the sample, types of products, geographical area, and colours.

The evidence shows that colours should be carefully considered when launching new brands or, indeed, when brand packages are redesigned, the multifunction of colours should be taken into consideration.

The paper covers an area neglected by past research, which has implications for understanding consumers' brand preferences.

Analyses successful international ads for alcoholic drinks, cigarettes and corporate identity to determine the core meanings for each product. Argues that these meanings constitute “cultural definitions” of the products, and that they represent a significant aspect of marketing information. Concludes that the meaning exemplars discerned in each category define parameters for advertising appeals, but still leave a lot of decision latitude about how to target within the market.

The purpose of this paper is to determine whether negative meanings consumers attribute to a corporation transfer to the endorser and to examine the moderating effects of corporate-specific and product-specific negative meanings on an endorser’s credibility.

Following a protocol designed by Till and Shimp (1998), two experiments were conducted to examine if meaning transfer exists (experiment 1) and if meaning type moderates reverse meaning transfer (experiment 2). A doubly repeated multivariate analysis of variance was conducted to investigate changes in the endorser’s credibility and attitudes toward the brand.

The results revealed that the negative meanings consumers associated with these corporate crises influence consumer perceptions of the endorser as well as attitude toward the brand.

This finding supports the position that meaning type moderates reverse meaning transfer and may explain variances in the literature on the significance of reverse meaning transfer. Based on these findings, brand crises have a negative effect on the endorser’s credibility.

The results lead the authors to suggest that endorsers as well as marketers should closely scrutinize brand partnerships, as the relationship may positively and negatively influence consumer perceptions of the athlete endorser.

Based on the findings from this study, brand managers need to appreciate differences in brand crisis type by tailoring brand image remediation strategies to fit the type(s) of meaning(s) associated with a specific controversy.

The results from the current study add, significantly, to the literature by being the first to evidence that different meanings associated with different types of brand crises produce different attitudes toward the brand.

Studies on cross-culture marketing often focus on either localization or globalization strategies. Based on data from pre-communist China (1912–1949), product hybridization – defined as a process or strategy that generates symbols, designs, behaviors and cultural identities that blend local and global elements – emerges as a popular intermediate strategy worthy of further inquiry. After examining the mechanisms and processes underlying this strategy, a schema for classifying product hybridization strategies is developed and illustrated. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Critical historical research method is applied to historical data and historical “traces” from pre-communist China’s corporate documents, memoirs, posters, advertisements, newspapers and secondhand sources.

Strategic interactions between domestic and foreign companies in pre-communist China fostered products and a city (Shanghai) containing Chinese and non-Chinese elements. Informed by historical traces and data from pre-communist China (1912-1949), a 2 × 2 classification schema relating company type (i.e. foreign or domestic) to values spectrum endpoint (i.e. domestic vs foreign) was formulated. This schema reflects the value of communication, negotiation and cultural (inter)penetration that accompanies cross-culture product flows.

Cross-culture marketing strategies meant to help companies satisfy diverse marketplace interests can induce a mélange of product design elements. Because product hybridization reflects reciprocity between domestic and foreign companies that embodies multiple interests and contrasting interpretations of product meanings, researchers should examine globalization and localization synergistically.

Strategies adopted by domestic and foreign companies in pre-communist China (1912–1949) can help contemporary companies design effective cross-culture marketing strategies in a global marketplace infused with competing meanings and interests.

Examining historical strategies adopted in pre-communist China (1912–1949) can inform contemporary marketers’ intuitions. Understanding product hybridization in global marketplaces can improve marketing efficiency.

The present studies provide support for a functional approach to instrumental and terminal values and the value‐attitude‐behaviour system. Study 1 surveyed individuals’ human values, the type of meaning to which they prefer to attend in products (i.e. utilitarian or symbolic), and how they choose to evaluate the products (i.e. a piecemeal or affective judgement). The study found that individuals who favoured instrumental to terminal human values showed a predisposition to attend to the utilitarian meanings of products and make piecemeal judgements. In contrast, individuals who favoured terminal over instrumental values preferred symbolic meanings, affective judgements, and human values in general. Study 2 found that individuals who favoured instrumental to terminal values had stronger instrumental attitudes towards cars and sun‐glasses. The results suggest that: psychological functions are not limited to attitudes or human values but span the breadth of the value‐attitude‐behaviour system; that two such psychological functions are instrumental and expressive; and that instrumental and terminal values serve instrumental and expressive functions, respectively.

The chapter examined the consumer meanings of product placements embedded in social games in different cultural contexts.

The theoretical perspective guiding the study is phenomenology, and the essay assignment and in-depth interviews were used to collect data.

The chapter was based on two qualitative research projects. Findings revealed that consumers in both countries appreciated certain characteristics of product placement in the context of social game, such as subtleness (naturalness) and unobtrusiveness (users’ freedom of choice and proactive choice); consumers’ real-world consumption in both countries seems to be more or less influenced by the product placement in social games; and while the young American consumers didn’t construct specific meanings for Facebook, the Chinese white-collar consumers actively created meanings for the Chinese social-network site.

The chapter offered some thick descriptions and in-depth analyses of product placements in social games in different cultural contexts from consumers’ experiential perspectives to enrich our theoretical understanding of product placement in the new media environment as well as to add valuable insights to the research literature on new advertising formats in general.

No study to date has been conducted to explore the product placement in social games in different cultural contexts. The study fills the research gap by exploring US college-aged consumers’ and Chinese white-collar consumers’ interpretations of product placements in the context of social games.

This paper aims to analyse the valuation of cultural products and explores what this process means for organizations involved in their production and marketing.

The authors develop the arguments using a number of mini-cases and industry examples.

The main thesis is that the meaningfulness and value ambiguity of cultural products shift the focus of valuation away from the products themselves towards how certain agents in the socio-cultural environment identify and certify these products. This paper discuss how valuation takes place via selection systems and how the nature of cultural products drives the dominance of one selection system over others.

Theories on value creation needs to take consideration of the critical role played by the selection system instead of just the firms that produce these products.

Organizations engaged in producing highly symbolic products need to manage selection systems and related industry dynamics to establish an enduring competitive advantage.

Value creation is a collective social efforts. Every member of the society can play a central role in this process. Better engaging various member of the society to enable them actively participate in the value creation process is what organizations today need to consider, instead of just treating individuals in the society as a “customer” who only passively consume. This research calls for the true empowerment of every member of the society to facilitate collective creativity and participation in the value creation endeavour that benefits the entire society as a whole.

It is the first paper that has created a conceptual link between the type of selection system and product categories. In other words, it takes existing literature on value creation and selection system one step further by creating the alignment or match between types of selection system and types of product categories. Therefore, it offers academics and practitioners a much detailed understanding on how value creation is conducted across different product categories.