Design management: Does collaboration with a designer bring business prosperity?

Abstract

Business prosperity is most often mentioned regarding economic results (for instance profit, sales, sales growth, brand value growth, high demand for products). One of the factors that can be used today in rival competitive struggles is design. The very perception of the role of design as an opportunity is an essential prerequisite for increasing business prosperity. It is, therefore, logical to look at who is the creator of quality design in companies. Companies can solve this problem internally or hire a designer. The question is, which of the variants increases businesses prosperity. The aim of the paper is to clarify this relationship, i.e. whether a company's cooperation with the designer brings business prosperity. Secondly, the strong belief among companies in the Czech Republic that the cooperation with the designer is very expensive is considered. For interpreting results basic statistics indicators and tests of hypotheses (p-value) were used. Results from tests confirmed that most companies that collaborate with a designer believe that design helps to achieve business prosperity. The results also indicate that reluctance to cooperate with a designer because it is too expensive is not confirmed. © 2018 University of Pardubice. All rights reserved.