Design management – the unexplored retail marketing competence

Food retailers invest heavily in design expertise to create exciting packaging and to develop store environments to entice customers to buy premium food products, and to strengthen their competitive edge. The process by which food retailers manage design has not been documented and this is an oversight in the field of design management that this paper addresses. Cases of four UK retailers are presented and their approaches to design management are compared and discussed. A model of retail design management is presented which represents current “better practice” in UK food retail; in addition, a model of the seven Ps of design management is presented to foster better understanding of the role of food retail design management function.