Abstract (EN)

Brand equity provides a high contribution to new product evaluation in consumption situations. The presentstudy aims at measuring the brand contribution to the evaluation of a design concept at an early stage of thenew product development process. The experimental design crosses four car concepts assessed onfunctional and hedonic dimensions, emotions and overall liking, and the brand of a generalist car maker.Results show that at this stage the direct effect of the brand hypothesized by the anchoring effect ismoderated by typicality and weak compared to the design effect. In fact, the overall brand effect is mainlymediated by emotions. Furthermore brand equity and design are working through different intermediateevaluations, functional for the brand and hedonic for the design. Finally results also emphasize that emotionis a key mediating variable between functional and hedonic evaluations and overall liking.