Smith, Allen E.

The outward appearance of a product and product
design form underlies successful innovation. Design
form creates initial impressions impacting buyer
judgments. Prototypical designs provide assurance
and familiarity. High-designs signal superior quality,
exclusiveness, and prestige. Continued high
performance gives authentic designs the real deal
reputation. Results contributed to product design
literature by revealing buyer’s initial impressions of
prototypical, authentic, and high-design forms, the independent
variables. The dependent variables were
functionality, ergonomics, hedonism, self-expression,
authenticity, and information search. Plan of
action included a convince sample of 60 millennials,
personal distribution/ collection, manipulation check,
and questionnaire pretest. Methods included secondary,
survey, and experimental research. Ethical
practice conformed to APA style, and consent forms.
Reliability/validity was heightened by items borrowed
from scholarly journals. Key findings: 1) high-design
scored highest on self-expression, hedonism, and
information search but lowest on ease of use; 2) prototypical
design posed the greatest injury hazard; 3)
Authentic design signaled highest functionality.