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.

Citation

Raffelt, U., Bernd Schmitt, and Alan Meyer. "Marketing Function and Form: How Functionalist and Experiential Architectures Affect Corporate Brand Personality." International Journal of Research in Marketing 30 (2013): 201-210.

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