How Design Is Driving Sales Across Industries: Apple Inc. (AAPL), NIKE, Inc. (NKE), Sodastream International Ltd (SODA)

I think General Electric Company (NYSE:GE) introducing some of their health care appliances, making them easy to interact with for consumers around the world who might not be exposed to using a heart monitor or something like that; it has to be simple, it has to be effective, and it has to be approachable for the average citizen.

It’s not so much that design wasn’t important in the past, it just wasn’t as important in the industrial economy. But now that manufacturers and retailers are starting to touch consumers in ways that we never saw before, I think it’s becoming increasingly important.

Blake: Definitely. It’s a way to set yourself apart from the competition. You can look at automobiles; still the number one factor for buying, I believe, is aesthetics. People aren’t going to buy a car that they don’t like the way it looks; it’s as simple as that.

Isaac: Exactly.

Blake: It could be the most reliable, best car in the world, but if they don’t like the way it looks, they’re probably not going to buy it.

Isaac: The BMW, one of the chief designers there came out and said that buying a car is almost never a rational decision. It’s always going to be driven by what you really gravitate toward. That decision, at the end of the day, if it was rational, you might get a low-end, reliable, stable car that is not going to be the hot rod that you really want to take home to the driveway. I think that’s a great point, within autos at least.

Blake: Exactly.

The article How Design Is Driving Sales Across Industries originally appeared on Fool.com and is written by Isaac Pino, CPA and Blake Bos.

Blake Bos owns shares of SodaStream. Isaac Pino, CPA owns shares of General Electric (NYSE:GE) Company and SodaStream. The Motley Fool recommends Apple, Nike, SodaStream, and Whole Foods Market (NASDAQ:WFM). The Motley Fool owns shares of Apple, General Electric Company, Nike, SodaStream, and Whole Foods Market.

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