Design effectiveness: Building customer satisfaction and loyalty through design

The contribution of design is regarded as one of the most crucial factors in business. However, there remains ambiguity about how design affects the building of customer satisfaction and loyalty. Furthermore, in terms of any business situation, the output of design efforts and investment should arguably be greater than management expect in order to be recognised as a worthy investment. This paper presents a novel combined conceptual framework of the design audit and value typology. By employing design embedded business theories, design value can be both assessed. Taking Freeman's stakeholder theory and conflating this with Holbrook's typology of value, a novel and more inclusive theory emerges upon which to clearly identify the scope of perspectives of value across all stakeholders within a business. Empirical findings through customer survey verify the suitability of the proposed measuring matrix used in this study. Furthermore, this empirical finding from customers can be the corner stone of determining the effectiveness of design in the food and beverage service industry by embedding design perceptions in a business theory of practice.