Designing for brand experience : operationalizing a service dominant logic approach to branding through service design
Abstract
This thesis reports on a research project that explored how Service Design
could be used to facilitate the translation of Brand Strategy into Customer
Experience. In this context, Designing for Brand Experience is proposed as a
Service Design framework that operationalizes a Service Design approach to
branding – namely, Service Branding; the process of translating the brand’s
conceptual meaning proposition into customer experiences through tangible
service interactions.
Accordingly, the Service Branding process is conceptualized as comprising
of two interdependent phases defining and delivering the Brand Experience
Proposition. Linking these two phases is the Brand Experience Manual – a
tool used to inform the design teams what the experience they are designing
for is, bridging the gap between Branding and Service Design.
During the early stages of the empirical explorations, it was noticed that
organizations were often unclear about their experience proposition, and as
such, to create a Brand Experience Manual, it was first necessary to define
the Brand Experience Proposition. Hence, the Brandslation process was
developed so as to define the Brand Experience Proposition, informing the
Brand Experience Manual.
Moreover, since Service Branding is also concerned with the delivery of the
Brand Experience Proposition, the design of the enablers of the service
interaction is also central to the Designing for Brand Experience framework.
As such, by integrating different approaches to service development, the
current research also proposes the Semantic Transformation for Experiences
concept.
This way, to operationalize the Service Branding process, the Designing for
Brand Experience framework combined the three findings from the current
research: the Brandslation process, which defined the Brand Experience
Proposition; the Brand Experience Manual, which communicates the Brand
Experience Proposition to the teams responsible for service development; and
Semantic Transformation for Experiences, which facilitates the
implementation of the Brand Experience Manual, enabling the design of
brand-based customer experiences.
Developed through a Design Research methodology, the Designing for Brand
Experience framework is the product of a practice-based research, grounded
in an action research strategy, which evolved through cycles of design
interventions and theoretical reflection.
The empirical explorations centered on the development of the Brandslation
process, and of the Brand Experience Manual in cooperation with the design
consultancies, organizational partners, and master degree students. In total,
there were four empirical iterations, resulting in an operational process for
defining, and a tool for communicating the Brand Experience Proposition.
Later, during the final reflection stages, a model for translating the Brand
Experience Proposition into the settings that support the brand-based service
interaction was advanced.
The findings from the current research add to both theory and practice – on
the theoretical level, the research contributes to a richer understanding of the
relationship between Service Design, Service Dominant Logic, and Branding,
as shown by the Designing for Brand Experience framework, and the
Semantic Transformation for Experiences concept; in practical terms, this
research contributes to the realization of the Service Branding process, and to
the development of brand-based customer experiences.