Package Design - November 2012 - 12

CoNVeRteR’s CoRNeR

by Pete Gioldasis

Predicting Design Success
Minimize risk, reduce cost and improve time to market by leveraging consumer, shopper and retailer insights on packaging.

D

esigners and brand owners face myriad pressures when developing packaging. It can’t negatively impact packing efficiencies or require capital investment for filling lines. The package needs to protect the product throughout the supply chain. It has to resonate with consumers and help product pop off the shelf. The packaging has to be more sustainable. Then, there’s ever increasing pressure to do this all for less cost. An effective way to deal with these challenges is to understand and leverage insights about the brand, product, shopper and retailer—and incorporate them into the package. A number of predictive tools are available to help in the evaluation of package designs—before commercialization or when current designs are underperforming—and can be used to harvest insights all along the product-development cycle.

Ethnography
Ethnography addresses what consumers do. Ethnography is a form of qualitative research that can be used to understand the ordinary activities of people in their natural settings, whether in the retail environment making a purchase decision, or in the home using a package. In addition to the traditional method of ethnography research through on-site observation, digital communities can now be used to connect with families as they plan their shopping trips and weekly routines to gain a deeper understanding of family dynamics, habits and preferences. Using ethnography insights can help increase the probability of success by understanding latent consumer behaviors and purchasing triggers based on packaging that consumers may otherwise not be able to articulate. Ethnography and eye tracking have been demonstrated as useful tools to better understand a consumer’s perception of a package design compared to just listening to what they say and are consciously aware of.

inSight groupS
Insight groups help brand owners and designers understand what consumers have to say. Central location testing and Web-based solutions are popular options for these groups. Central location testing allows for testing concepts quickly with real-time results and qualitative/quantitative questioning at the end of each session to get further feedback on specific areas of interest. Web-based insights research allows access to essentially any target market and brand owners can access a larger, nationally representative sample at a lower cost per interview.

Social MEdia analySiS
Social-media analysis examines what keeps customers engaged. It gives insight into online conversations in consumers’ own words. Numerous tools facilitate capturing and analyzing real-time feedback from various social-media communities that can be translated into actionable insight.

EngagE Early EyE tracking
Eye tracking reveals what shoppers see. Eye tracking is essentially measurement of eye activity: where the consumer looks while evaluating items on store shelves, what they ignore and how the eye reacts to different packaging elements. Recent research indicates that more than 75% of purchase decisions are made in-store and that 44% of a consumer’s purchasing decision is influenced by packaging—color, features, feel—with cost as the second most important factor. The visibility of a product has a major influence on its success in a crowded retail environment.
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Historically, brand owners have hesitated to reach out to packaging suppliers early in the design process, but engaging early with suppliers who integrate packaging-focused insights into their innovation processes and have multi-material expertise enables package designers to create and execute designs— structure, function and graphics—more effectively and ensures manufacturability and a smooth handoff from the design firm to manufacturing. PD

Pete Gioldasis is division marketing manager at Sonoco. For more information, visit www.sonoco.com.
Package Design - November 2012

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Package Design - November 2012
