摘要
近年来,AI设计爆火出圈并对人们的生活产生了巨大的影响。当老字号品牌遇到AI设计时会产生怎样的火花?深入研究AI设计老字号品牌产品的作用机理和消费者的产品态度对老字号品牌具有现实意义。本文将AI设计产品的理念引入老字号品牌的研究,通过设计四个情境实验,探讨了老字号品牌产品设计来源(AI v s.人类)对产品态度的影响、中介机制及边界条件。研究结果显示,老字号品牌使用AI(v s.人类)设计产品对消费者产品态度产生积极影响,其中新奇感起到中介作用。同时,老字号品牌产品设计来源对新奇感的影响受到品牌概念的调节及消费者怀旧倾向的再调节作用。此外,消费者对老字号品牌的规范信念在老字号品牌产品设计来源对产品态度的影响中起调节作用。本研究拓展了老字号品牌产品设计的理论研究,为老字号品牌如何选择产品设计来源以改善消费者的产品态度提供了实践启示。
Time-honored brands serve as symbols of China’s rich cultural heritage,embodying the continuity of its longstanding traditions.However,as market dynamics and technological advancements evolve,many of these brands face significant challenges.In terms of product innovation,some time-honored brands remain entrenched in tradition,exhibiting a lack of innovation and adaptability.Others struggle with slow product iteration,and their newly introduced offerings often fail to gain consumer acceptance in the market.With the rapid advancements in generative AI,this technology has demonstrated its potential to replace human effort in product design.AI-driven design offers several advantages:it significantly reduces firms’research and development costs,accelerates the pace of new product launches,and leverages big data analytics to capture consumer preferences more effectively.Notably,some brands have already integrated AI into their product design processes,yielding positive market responses.For instance,the Chinese ice cream brand Chicecream utilized AI to develop the SaSaa ice cream,which successfully attracted consumer attention and boosted sales.Similarly,the AI-designed chairs by Kartell gained widespread acclaim at Milan Design Week,receiving highly positive feedback from audiences.While these applications of AI-driven design have proven successful among emerging and international brands,consumer attitudes toward the adoption of AI in product design by time-honored brands remain unclear.The theory of novelty categorization posits that when an event does not fit into existing categories,it stimulates individuals,eliciting a sense of novelty.Novelty refers to new and unfamiliar cognitive stimuli for consumers—experiences that conflict with prior expectations and are perceived as fresh and unexpected.Building on the theory of novelty categorization,this study proposes that compared to human-designed products,AI-designed products from time-honored brands elicit greater consumer-perceived novelty,leading to more positive product attitudes.However,for symbolic(vs.functional)time-honored brands,AI-designed products generate lower perceived novelty,thereby reducing consumers’positive responses.This effect is further moderated by consumers’nostalgia tendencies.Moreover,the stronger consumers’normative beliefs about time-honored brands,the more negative their attitudes toward AI-designed products from these brands.After reviewing the literature on time-honored brands and AI-designed products,this study conducts a series of experiments to examine the underlying mechanism and boundary conditions of the effect of product design sources on consumer product attitudes.The key findings are as follows:First,compared to human-designed products,AI-designed products from time-honored brands elicit more positive consumer attitudes.This effect is mediated by perceived novelty,such that AI-designed products generate higher perceived novelty than human-designed ones,which in turn leads to more favorable product attitudes.Second,this study identifies and empirically validates the moderating role of brand concept and the further moderating effect of consumer nostalgia tendency on the relationship between product design sources and perceived novelty.The findings indicate that brand concept moderates the effect of product design sources on perceived novelty.Specifically,for functional time-honored brands,AI-designed products elicit greater perceived novelty than human-designed ones.However,for symbolic time-honored brands,AI-designed products are less likely to elicit perceived novelty than human-designed ones.Furthermore,based on the Elaboration Likelihood Model(ELM),this study finds that the aforementioned effect is further moderated by consumers’nostalgia tendency.For consumers with low nostalgia tendencies,AI(vs.human)design enhances perceived novelty for functional brands but reduces it for symbolic brands.However,for consumers with high nostalgia tendencies,AI(vs.human)design fails to elicit novelty for both functional and symbolic time-honored brands.Additionally,this study demonstrates that the effect of product design sources on consumer product attitudes is moderated byconsumers’normative beliefs about time-honored brands.Specifically,for consumers with strong normative beliefs,AI(vs.human)design leads to more negative product attitudes.In contrast,for consumers with weak normative beliefs,AI(vs.human)design elicits more positive product attitudes.This study holds significant theoretical value and practical implica-tions,with its potential marginal contributions reflected in the follow-ing three aspects:First,this research is among the first to introduce AI design into the study of time-honored brands.By aligning with the development trends of generative AI,this study pioneers the concept of integrating AI design into time-honored brands and systematically examines the impact of AI(vs.human)design on consumer product attitudes.In doing so,it provides a theoretical foundation for time-hon-ored brands in selecting different product design sources,which has important theoretical implications for enhancing consumer attitudes toward their products.Second,this study deepens the understanding of the underlying mechanism through which product design sources influence consumer product attitudes,demonstrating the mediating role of perceived novelty.In the application of AI-designed products in time-honored brands,consumers’inherent perceptions of these brands,combined with their understanding of AI as efficient and high-ly capable,lead to heightened perceptions of novelty.This study finds that perceived novelty effectively explains the mechanism by which product design sources affect consumer attitudes toward products from time-honored brands.These findings contribute to the theoretical exploration of the effect mechanisms of product design sources.Third,this study proposes and empirically validates multiple boundary con-ditions of the proposed model.By incorporating brand concept,con-sumer nostalgia tendency,and normative beliefs,this study provides a more comprehensive prediction of outcomes and an explanatory framework for how AI(vs.human)design influences consumer at-titudes toward products from time-honored brands.Specifically,the findings reveal that symbolic(vs.functional)brand concepts weaken the perceived novelty associated with AI-designed products,thereby diminishing the positive effect on product attitudes.Furthermore,by introducing nostalgia tendency as a personality trait,this study demon-strates that consumers with high(vs.low)nostalgia tendencies exhibit a weaker positive response to AI-designed products from functional time-honored brands,thereby attenuating the moderating role of brand concept.Finally,this study verifies the moderating role of normative beliefs,showing that consumers with strong normative beliefs exhibit more negative attitudes toward AI-designed products from time-hon-ored brands.These findings deepen the theoretical understanding of the impact of product design sources on time-honored brands.
作者
张初兵
乔娟娟
宋雨泽
李天歌
Zhang Chubing;Qiao Juanjuan;Song Yuze;Li Tiange(Business School of Tianjin University of Finance and Economics;Business School of Zhengzhou University)
出处
《南开管理评论》
北大核心
2025年第3期16-26,39,共12页
Nankai Business Review
基金
国家社会科学基金后期资助项目(21FGLB055)
教育部青年基金项目(23YJC630041)资助。
