Marketing function and form: How functionalist and experiential architectures affect corporate brand personality

Ursula Raffelt, Bernd Schmitt and Anton Meyer

International Journal of Research in Marketing, 2013, vol. 30, issue 3, 201-210

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.

Keywords: Corporate architecture; Design; Corporate image; Brand personality; Experience (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ijrema:v:30:y:2013:i:3:p:201-210

DOI: 10.1016/j.ijresmar.2013.02.002

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