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The purpose of this paper is to identify the web experience elements that aid the interaction between the consumer and fashion garments online. Two elements have been identified, product viewing and fashion information online, and analysis of the effects of these elements and the influence they have on consumers’ behaviour and decision‐making process are explored.

Qualitative data collection was employed utilising both photo‐elicitation and projective techniques during in‐depth interviews. Analysis of the elements is necessary to confirm how the cues are likely to affect the consumers’ interaction and influence the consumers’ shopping experience. Focus is placed on hedonic and utilitarian effects and purchase intentions towards fashion apparel investigating young consumers in reference to online retailing.

It is evident from the interviews that the two elements create very different experiences for the consumer with regards to viewing fashion online, the first area identified functional product viewing, allows the consumer to personalise how they view and interact with the garment stimulating more utilitarian effects, whilst the second area, aesthetic fashion information is driven by the retailer providing advice and information about the garments stimulating hedonic effects. Online fashion retailers must sufficiently intertwine hedonic entertainment with practical utilitarianism to provide a satisfying online shopping experience.

This research provides an examination into the complex area of interaction with garments online and its link to fashion‐related consumer behaviour. This study makes an important contribution to the literature to date, and raises additional questions for future research.

The essential investments in new product development (NPD) made by industrial companies entail effective management of NPD activities. In this context, performance measurement is one of the means that can be employed in the pursuit of effectiveness.

As part of a cross-cultural research, the purpose of this paper is to provide further insights into the existing product-country image (PCI) of the Chinese consumers’ perceptions of Spain, its products, and its people, thereby providing an overall contemporary Spanish PCI within the Chinese market.

In total, 215 valid structured questionnaires were gathered throughout China. Following a pre-investigation of 259 usable questionnaires, a 52-item construct was drawn from the existing widely used PCI item scales, designing a structured PCI construct, covering: “country image,” “personal image,” “product image,” “general knowledge about Spain,” and “personal data.”

The study provides: a PCI pre-investigation research results as well as a literature review on PCI topic; research results for the five hypotheses concerning Chinese citizens’ view of Spanish product price, quality, technicality, inventiveness, and known brands view; descriptive statistics as well as result graphs for each of the covered PCI sections; our PCI construct variable correlations with the tested five product image variables; and general implications.

Standardizing PCI longitudinal studies, as well as focusing on how the Spanish Government and private sector should determine the long-term criteria to facilitate a clearer representation of the Spanish PCI evolution within the Chinese market, is advised.

The current study intends to capture insights for Spain and other country’s public and private sector decision makers to better integrate market and non-market strategies. The results would further assist delineating strategies to avoid the liability of foreignness of Spanish organizations within China.

Recognizing the rationale of a product family architecture (PFA) with respect to design for mass customization (DFMC), this paper discusses the fundamental issues underlying a PFA, including product information modeling, structural implications of product families, functional variety versus technical variety, class‐member relationships inherent in variety, modularity and commonality, PFA design spaces, and PFA composition. The background research is reviewed in terms of product architecture and modularity, product platform and product families, and product modeling and design process models. To organize product varieties in DFMC, a PFA should be described from three different perspectives, namely the functional (as seen from customer, sales and marketing viewpoints), behavioral (as seen from the product technology or design engineer perspective) and structural (as seen from the fulfillment or manufacturing and logistic perspective). Meeting diverse customer requirements and achieving volume economy simultaneously can be best achieved by synchronizing these three perspectives. In fact, the mappings between PFA views manifest the cooperative effort among different business functions, whilst three PFA views facilitate the integration of different phases of product development.

This paper deals with the organizing of interactive product development. Developing products in interaction between firms may provide benefits in terms of specialization, increased innovation, and possibilities to perform development activities in parallel. However, the differentiation of product development among a number of firms also implies that various dependencies need to be dealt with across firm boundaries. How dependencies may be dealt with across firms is related to how product development is organized. The purpose of the paper is to explore dependencies and how interactive product development may be organized with regard to these dependencies.

The analytical framework is based on the industrial network approach, and deals with the development of products in terms of adaptation and combination of heterogeneous resources. There are dependencies between resources, that is, they are embedded, implying that no resource can be developed in isolation. The characteristics of and dependencies related to four main categories of resources (products, production facilities, business units and business relationships) provide a basis for analyzing the organizing of interactive product development.

Three in-depth case studies are used to explore the organizing of interactive product development with regard to dependencies. The first two cases are based on the development of the electrical system and the seats for Volvo’s large car platform (P2), performed in interaction with Delphi and Lear respectively. The third case is based on the interaction between Scania and Dayco/DFC Tech for the development of various pipes and hoses for a new truck model.

The analysis is focused on what different dependencies the firms considered and dealt with, and how product development was organized with regard to these dependencies. It is concluded that there is a complex and dynamic pattern of dependencies that reaches far beyond the developed product as well as beyond individual business units. To deal with these dependencies, development may be organized in teams where several business units are represented. This enables interaction between different business units’ resource collections, which is important for resource adaptation as well as for innovation. The delimiting and relating functions of the team boundary are elaborated upon and it is argued that also teams may be regarded as actors. It is also concluded that a modular product structure may entail a modular organization with regard to the teams, though, interaction between business units and teams is needed. A strong connection between the technical structure and the organizational structure is identified and it is concluded that policies regarding the technical structure (e.g. concerning “carry-over”) cannot be separated from the management of the organizational structure (e.g. the supplier structure). The organizing of product development is in itself a complex and dynamic task that needs to be subject to interaction between business units.

In every industry there are resources. Some are moving, others more fixed; some are technical, others social. People working with the resources, for example, as buyers or sellers, or users or producers, may not make much notice of them. A product sells. A facility functions. The business relationship in which we make our money has “always” been there. However, some times this picture of order is disturbed. A user having purchased a product for decades may “suddenly” say to the producer that s/he does not appreciate the product. And a producer having received an order of a product that s/he thought was well known, may find it impossible to sell it. Such disturbances may be ignored. Or they can be used as a platform for development. In this study we investigate the latter option, theoretically and through real world data. Concerning theory we draw on the industrial network approach. We see industrial actors as part of (industrial) networks. In their activities actors use and produce resources. Moreover, the actors interact − bilaterally and multilaterally. This leads to development of resources and networks. Through “thick” descriptions of two cases we illustrate and try to understand the interactive character of resource development and how actors do business on features of resources. The cases are about a certain type of resource, a product − goat milk. The main message to industrial actors is that they should pay attention to that products can be co-created. Successful co-creation of products, moreover, may require development also of business relationships and their connections (“networking”).

The purpose of this paper is to facilitate and clarify the perceptions of Spanish consumers towards China, its people, and its products, while outlining the overall contemporary Chinese product-country image (PCI) within the Spanish market.

A 52-item construct was adapted from former PCI scales from cross-cultural equivalence, including “country image”, “personal image”, “product image”, “general knowledge about China”, and “personal data”. Overall, 215 valid structured questionnaires were gathered.

The current study provides: a PCI literature review; hypotheses results concerning Spanish citizens’ views of Chinese products’ price, quality, technicality, inventiveness, and known brands concepts; descriptive statistics and results graphs for each of the PCI sections; and correlations of other variables with the five product image variables within the construct.

Implementing standardized, longitudinal consumer studies that facilitate better comprehension of PCI evolution within a specific market emerged as a future research agenda.

The data informed both the Chinese public and private organizations’ managers of the importance of adapting to the market and non-market environments within Spain to avoid the liability of country of origin effect.

To achieve a full understanding of the role of marketing from plan to profit requires a knowledge of the basic building blocks. This textbook introduces the key concepts in the art or science of marketing to practising managers. Understanding your customers and consumers, the 4 Ps (Product, Place, Price and Promotion) provides the basic tools for effective marketing. Deploying your resources and informing your managerial decision making is dealt with in Unit VII introducing marketing intelligence, competition, budgeting and organisational issues. The logical conclusion of this effort is achieving sales and the particular techniques involved are explored in the final section.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of a pragmatic approach to components off‐the‐shelf (COTS)‐based development. Software product line (SPL) is at the forefront among the techniques for reducing costs, decreasing schedule time, and ensuring commonality of features across a family of products – as COTS are reused in multiple products.

A disciplined process for SPL development is still needed. This paper proposes the Y‐model for COTS‐based SPL development. The model put forward identifies and elaborates the essential phases and activities of SPL development from COTS‐based repository.

The Y‐model provides an efficient way of integrating the approaches of SPL and COTS‐based development as a cohesive software development model.

The model has the potential to tremendously increase software engineers' productivity. Thus, software architects, domain engineers and component designers should become aware of how to use these ideas to structure their models and designs.

This paper describes a systematic approach for COTS‐based development that takes into account the cataloguing and retrieval of software assets permeating a process that encompasses all stages of software development, from system product requirements engineering to system deployment.

This paper aims to explore professional product designers’ views on creative design and to compare their viewpoints with the related academic literature on product marketing.

To find the designers’ views on creative design, face-to-face in-depth interviews based on repertory grid analysis and semi-structured questions were conducted with 32 professional and award-wining product designers who mostly design for international producers.

Although marketing scholars often approach design as a noun – something that can be viewed and analysed as a bundle of attributes, dimensions or characteristics – professional designers view design differently. To them, design is a verb, a problem-solving process through which they meet the challenges consumers have with products. Comparing professional product designers’ views on design creativity with the main topics in the product marketing literature places scholars’ dispositionalism against designers’ situationalism; it also enables marketing scholars to improve their viewpoints on product design and to bring practical problem-solving and design thinking into their research. This also increases mutual understanding between marketers and designers.

This research enhances the knowledge of marketing scholars, marketers and designers about each other’s perspectives on product design creativity, which will improve their mutual understanding and the business-to-business relationship between marketers and designers.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is the first study that has attempted to discover product designers’ opinions on the main topics in the related academic literature.