The reputation of personal luxury brands has undergone a significant transformation since 2018, with the industry experiencing a reputation recession followed by an uneven reputation renaissance. This shift underscores a deeper misalignment between luxury brands and the evolving values of the new luxury consumer. Millennials, soon set to dominate the luxury market, have accelerated this change. Their engagement with brands on Instagram not only shapes brand perception but also reflects their shifting interests. As social media become central to shaping brand reputation, analysing these engagement patterns offers critical insight into the preferences of the new luxury consumer.

This study examines how successful and struggling brands manage their reputation through content and engagement practices on Instagram. Using a hybrid research approach, it integrates quantitative engagement metrics with qualitative multimodal thematic analysis conducted on six luxury brands (three successful and three struggling) between 2021 and 2023, marking the onset of the reputation recession. To guide the exploratory nature of this study, an integrative framework of brand reputation was developed to synthesise company-controlled, consumer-controlled, and co-created reputation factors. The findings reveal that successful brands leverage cultural capital, particularly through collaboration with South Korean pop culture figures, to enhance brand coolness and foster deeper emotional connections. Struggling brands fail to establish these connections, relying on conventional celebrity endorsements that lack subcultural appeal, leading to continued reputation challenges.

By analysing only the most and least liked posts on Instagram, subtle engagement strategy adjustments could not be identified. Additionally, excluding comment data limited deeper sentiment analysis. Moreover, this research investigates a symptom of a deeper underlying issue caused by a changed luxury consumer. Future research should explore consumer sentiment through the comment section, expand the dataset to detect brand coolness life cycle transitions and most importantly, examine the values of the new luxury consumer that shape their purchasing behaviour. Despite these limitations, this research contributes to brand reputation literature by bridging fragmented studies into a cohesive framework for evaluating brand reputation factors. For luxury brands, the reputation dashboard provides a structured framework that identifies one of these factors, brand coolness, as a competitive advantage to strengthen consumer loyalty, word-of-mouth, and brand equity. Finally, transforming an once-abstract and intangible concept into a tool for business strategy.

This thesis explores the strategic market entry of Creative Wall Paint, a new product by Royal Talens, under the Amsterdam All Acrylics brand. With the company's expansion into wall paint production, the research aims to determine the most feasible, viable, and desirable approach for launching and positioning the product within a competitive market.

Through an extensive market, consumer, and competitor analysis, the study identifies Creative Home Improvers as the primary target group, individuals who seek personalised and artistic interior design solutions beyond traditional wall painting. The research reveals that differentiation is essential, as the wall paint market is highly competitive and dominated by established brands.

The findings suggest that Creative Wall Paint should not be positioned as a conventional product but rather as a creative tool that enables artistic self-expression. A multi-channel marketing strategy is proposed, leveraging digital engagement, influencer collaborations, and retail partnerships to reach and inspire consumers. Additionally, the study emphasises the importance of educational support, curated colour palettes, and creative guidance, ensuring accessibility and confidence for users.

By implementing this strategy, Royal Talens can successfully diversify into the Interior DIY market, expanding its consumer base while maintaining the artistic credibility of the Amsterdam All Acrylics brand. The research provides a structured Product-Service System (PSS) for launching Creative Wall Paint, ensuring a differentiated market position and long-term growth potential.

This master thesis explores the integration process between Accenture's Industry X and VanBerlo, following the industry trend of big consultancies acquiring creative design agencies to enable transformative work and comprehensive solutions for clients. The research objective of this project is to design a Synergy Creation Approach (SCA) that enhances synergy between Industry X and VanBerlo, leveraging their capabilities to offer end-to-end solutions in joint propositions.

Using the double diamond method in close collaboration with Industry X and VanBerlo employees, the thesis examines the opportunities and challenges for synergy creation. The key findings highlight that a lack of understanding of each other's capabilities hinders synergy creation during business development. The research emphasises the importance of clear understanding and shared vision, preserving design thinking approaches, and incorporating all responsible parties in the process.

To foster synergy through business development, an understanding of client needs and each other’s capabilities is essential. This understanding allows for the identification of opportunities,enabling the proposal of synergy offerings to clients. By building upon each other's work, this collaborative approach delivers greater value to clients.

Based on the Outside-in Framework of Takhtehkar and Rademakers (2020), a Synergy Creation Approach is proposed. This approach guides Industry X’s and VanBerlo's domain leads in creating, validating, and selling synergy offerings. By increasing awareness of each other's capabilities and possible synergy offerings, the tools used during the SCA, such as the Joint Value Proposition workshop, the Synergy Canvas and the Synergy Offering Deck, help identify opportunities for synergy that align with the client's specific needs.

This thesis provides valuable insights through the Synergy Creation Approach, it addresses cases where organisations aspire to achieve synergy but face challenges in leveraging each other's capabilities, as seen in the case of Accenture's Industry X and VanBerlo. The SCA serves as a guiding framework that enhances collaboration between consultancies and design bureaus, enabling them to drive transformative and value-driven solutions for clients.

When we look at all of the benefits of having houseplants around us, it is not hard to see why they have been around for ages already. However, over the past years they have seen a huge surge in popularity. The pandemic has been a big accelerator to this surge in popularity. This thesis was done for Overgrown Plantshop. This surge in popularity has given Overgrown the opportunity to grow and thrive, but it also came with a set of challenges. The quickly changing market brought on a lot of new small plant shops, making competition fierce. In addition to this, rare plants became a lot more difficult to source in an ethical way. Because of these challenges, Overgrown wants to develop a new product, service or product-service system to expand into a new niche. As a young company Overgrown has little to no knowledge or experience about the market outside of the rare houseplant niche. This lead to the following design assignment: “Get a deep understanding of the market and it’s consumers. Use this to drive a new strategic future vision which is visualized in a roadmap and create a first product or product-service system towards realizing this future vision “ The double diamond approach was followed. Through broad and orienting interviews, a crucial moment was identified in the journey to becoming a plant parent: the green spark. This is a crucial part for whether a person commits to being a long(er) time plant parent, or falls back into believing they are not capable. A context mapping study was used to get a deep understanding of users during the green spark. The results were a persona and a set of design requirements with accompanying ‘how might we’ questions. Lastly, the results were used to determined Ovegrown’s new future vision: “Overgrown aims to support sustainable consumption of plants by supporting plant parents to have longer lasting bonds with their houseplants“ The first step towards this future vision is Emma. Emma helps to lower the barrier for new plant parents. Right now, the most common trigger that creates a low barrier is a cheap plant. In the case the plant dies, not a lot is lost. Overgrown wants to achieve a similar low starting barrier, but in a more sustainable way. Instead of offering a cheap plant that is easily replaceable, Overgrown offers a high quality plant that is all ready to go for a smooth start. After the purchase of Emma, Overgrown offers additional services that help the plant parent form a closer bond with their plant. These services are developed and added onto through three horizons that are laid out in a roadmap. Throughout these horizons Overgrown’s focus shifts from selling plants to selling plant care. By doing this Overgrown wants to take the focus away from always acquiring new trendy plants to having stronger bonds with the plants you already have. Overgrown gets a closer bond with their customers, becoming a partner in long term plant growing.