The role of brand experience and affective commitment in determining brand loyalty

Our study is an attempt to approach design management from a cultural perspective. Specifically, we assume that design orientation reflects an underlying organisational culture that distinguishes design oriented companies from the rest and reinforces their capability to generate competitive advantage from design management. Our aim is to disentangle the main characteristics of this culture. A case study research approach was adopted to gain some initial insights on the cultural characteristics of the population considered in the present study. The results of the field study identify a set of general values and product-related values shared by the design-oriented companies considered in this research. In addition, the existence of functional subcultures and cross-cultural differences is analysed, together with a discussion on how organisational culture and functional sub-cultures can co-exist in this specific context. We gathered a rich set of qualitative data, the number of cases is still too small to consider replications and opportunities for theory building. We propose a structured description of design orientation from a multiple level of analysis (organisational culture and individual sub-cultures). We provide useful insights on interaction and armonisation between these levels, leading to a better understanding of the drivers of design-oriented behaviour. Additionally, the cross-cultural setting of the study addresses the interconnectedness of cross-cultural design practices and design-oriented managerial values.