Industrial Designers: Are You Ready for Foreign Markets? Assessing Designer Confidence and Prediction Accuracy in a Transnational Marketing Context

Abstract

In order to boost sales in foreign markets and compete with emerging local competitors, global companies from developed countries are realizing that they need to develop products specifically for the local markets. Meanwhile, companies in developing nations are building up their design staff and seeking to establish their own global brands. This recent growth in design activity targeting overseas markets suggests the need for academic research to better understand the phenomenon of design expertise transfer across national borders. The present research explores industrial designers' expertise transfer across cultures with respect to knowledge calibration. Based on the literature on expertise and Shanteau's theory of expert competence, several hypotheses are developed regarding the main effect of culture, and the interaction between culture and expertise level, on design confidence and prediction accuracy. A three‐phase experimental study is conducted to test the hypotheses. Results suggest that both expert designers and non‐expert designers are poorly calibrated and overconfident. Nonetheless, expert designers are better calibrated when designing products for a foreign market than for their home market. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.