Article ID Journal Published Year Pages File Type
880204 International Journal of Research in Marketing 2013 10 Pages PDF
Abstract

How are the designs of corporate buildings used to create meaning and project a corporate image and personality? We distinguish functionalist architecture (“form follows function”), which focuses on the primary, utilitarian function of a building, from experiential architecture (“from function to form”), which uses the form of a building to communicate symbolically about the organization. A large-scale quantitative study including 150 buildings shows that four architectural design types (“solid,” “balanced,” “expressive,” and “disruptive” designs, emerging from a mix of functionalist and experiential architectures, lead to distinct corporate brand personalities (e.g., competence for functionalist architecture and excitement for experiential architecture). We validate these findings in a qualitative study and discuss how this research contributes toward the development of a consumer-oriented design theory.

Related Topics
Social Sciences and Humanities Business, Management and Accounting Marketing
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