Design and the marketing edge {analysis: industrial design}

While conventional market research often only identifies preferences between what already exists, imaginative marketing anticipates trends and identifies opportunities. This is one of the areas in which industrial designers have a role to play in marketing - to ask the ´what if´ and ´why not´ questions that can identify or create new products. Industrial designers can facilitate communication between marketing and technical staff and also create a genuine differentiation between a product and the competition. The role of the industrial designer in the creation of distinction may nothing more than surface appearance, but the real benefits come from innovation and the addition of value