Co-design: a novel approach to create value-added products in the creative fashion industry

Abstract

Additional value creation is a critical characteristic of innovative products. Co-design is regarded as an effective approach to creating additional experience value through customer engagement in the product development process. It does not only benefit the comprehension of customer desires but also the inspiration for creating and increasing customer loyalty. However, some barriers may exist in value-creation chains in many creative industries, such as the designer-driven product design, forecast-based marketing, homogeneity of products, long product and development cycles, mass production and so forth. As a typical creation-intensive industry, the fashion industry is focused on in this paper to be surveyed in terms of practices of co-design. This paper has analysed the co-design practices in the fashion industry in terms of market research, design model and manufacturing. Several practitioners who implement co-design strategy in fashion product development have been observed and analysed from the perspective of the value creation chain. The study result demonstrates that customer involvement, co-creating design method, collaborative product development mechanism are the essential aspects of the implementation of co-design in the fashion industry. The significance of this study is not only to offer an effective approach for the fashion industry to survive in increasingly competitive markets but also to point out the developing direction of the relative creative industries. In the conclusion, the paper suggests that further studies related to co-design need to be addressed and would primarily concern themes about the various additional values for innovative products and services and mass customization in creative industries.