Notes on "Holistic Package Design and Consumer Brand Impressions" research paper

During my research for my proposal submission in November, I read a research paper about how different styles of packaging designs could influence a consumer's perception of the product.   The research and visual comparisons of packaging styles were useful in helping the reader to understand why each "category" was perceived in the way it was.  While my project is not on packaging design per se, I felt that the information which could be gleaned from this paper related to the area of persuasive visuals I am looking at.   The case presented here is that certain kinds of product visuals can persuade a customer who is looking for a product with particular connotations, for example luxurious or natural.  What I found interesting was that the study looked at packaging visuals in general, and then at specific categories such as perfume and wine where the results differed due to the existing connotations of the products themselves.

"The results suggest that package design is an extremely influential medium because of its pervasive impact on purchasers, its presence at the crucial moment when the purchase decision is made, and the consumers' high level of involvement when they actively scan packages in their decision making."

The study looked at nearly 200 logo designs, categorising them under 22 design elements.  This study resulted in Ulrich and Malkewitz identifying 7 factors of packaging design which can influence a consumer brand impression.   Four of the seven were found to be particularly impactful in relation to visuals.  These were described as "delicate", "natural", "massive" and "contrasting" respectively.  These are shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1

Orth and Malkewitz found that designs under the "massive" category "are associated with impressions of excitement and score low on competence and sophistication.  Sincerety are ruggedness are only average."  The large texts and bright, sometimes clashing, colour scheme can suggest, through their slight disregard to quality design, that the product is "low in quality, inexpensive, less healthy, and not classy."  If we were to compare the Liptons' Tea package shown above to the Clipper package under a different category, it is easy to feel as though the more refined design would win out in terms of product quality.  Further examples could include Tetley's compared to Twinings and so on.

In the second column, contrasting designs are seen to be a slight variance from the massive category in style, showing similar bold colour schemes but with a greater sensitivity to style.  "Contrasting package designs score high on excitement, low on competence and sophistication, and average on sincerity.  In contrast to massive designs, contrasting packages lead to stronger impressions of ruggedness.  Other differentiating impressions include low quality, not feminine, and inexpensive."  

According to Orth and Malkewitz, "…natural"...combines lower-level characteristics, such as representative and organic, and reflects the degree to which constitutive design elements depict commonly experienced objects.  For example, a logo consisting of an image of a leaf would be judged to be more natural than one consisting of a building."  This shows the effectiveness of cultural connotations in imagery, as demonstrated by the leaf being universal symbol of nature, ditto the colour green as shown above.  If you look closely, all packages under the "natural" heading have one or both of these features, thus linking themselves to an aesthetic inspired by nature.  Natural designs also "generate impressions of sincerity, competence, and sophistication; they score low on excitement and average on ruggedness.  Natural designs are perceived as high quality, feminine, healthy, and expensive but a good value for money, and they evoke happy memories."  As can be seen on the extended products diagram, natural packages also feature silhouettes which lean towards the organic form which furthers this finding. 

"Delicate package designs score high on competence and sophistication, whereas sincerity, excitement, and ruggedness responses are only average.  Delicate designs further generate impressions of high quality, classy. and expensive."  This can be identified by the refined typography and use of white space seen in the products in the first diagram in Figure 1.  Note that the objects in the second diagram appear to be designed for women, which in terms of cultural perception follows the "delicate" factor.

The researchers decided to further test their findings on the category of wine bottles, as this area contains  "a wide variety of design elements commonly found in other consumer goods".  In addition to this, wine is a hugely popular category where customers commonly try out new products much more than they would in, say, the washing powder category.  For this reason Orth and Malketwitz write that "there is an opportunity to use brands largely unfamiliar to research participants, there is at least anecdotal evidence that wine package design influences consumer impressions".  The wine packaging category also has enough scope and breadth in designs for the research to account for all the categories identified in the initial study, consequently giving a cohesive set of results which was consistent with this data.

Figure 2

  The set of data found in the analysis on wine packages is presented in the opposite way to the initial data findings, in order to present a clear indication of what kind of packaging evokes what kind of response from a customer.  In this screenshot we can see that Bierzo wine ranks low on excitement, and the plain monochrome label on the image shows us why.  In contrast, the high-ranking Siskiyou Sideways wine package embodies the description under the item column, due to it's bright yellow colour and skewed silhouette which would catch anyone's eye on the wine shelf.  Punk Floyd wine, a poor pun on the famous band with a trashy label, ranks low on competence compared to the elegant and illustrated Chateau Lagarenne, and so on.  

The researchers felt that it was important to extend this research further into another product area where the market could have a "higher" taste.  Perfume bottles were ranked under the same categories as the household items in the first study.   "For fragrances, massive packages are associated with below-average impression of excitement and sophistication and above-average ruggedness." This can be gauged from the bulky silhouettes of the column under that category, compared to the delicate category which is described as "competent, sophisticated and of low-ruggedness."  Similarly, natural designs appear to be " sincere and sophisticated" but are slightly bulkier than their delicate counterparts.  We can see that the competence category is tied up in the width of the bottle.  Nondescript designs' square builds mean that they are "associated with low sincerity, low excitement and low ruggedness."  

Figure 3

Looking back over the findings, some patterns across packaging types can be identified.  Orith and Malkewitz note that "massive designs are associated with low sophistication and average sincerity; contrasting designs generate high excitement and high ruggedness, low competence and average sincerity, and natural designs convey sincerity and sophistication but only average ruggedness."  While this study is not a complete analysis of the factors of holistic packaging design, it is a starting guide to which aesthetics could provoke which response in customers.  In relation to my own research, this study could be a helpful reference should I choose to create product visuals as part of my brand campaign, as it has has been shown here that they can be persuasive if used in the right way.  Effective persuasion is central to a brand's connection with a customer, and importantly in the consumer-heavy market, can also influence how much they are willing to spend based on how the product looks.  The methods of persuasion used here, through package design, could be used in conjunction with other visual techniques to push a message/idea on multiple levels.

References

Malkewitz, K and Orth, U.R. 2008.  Journal of Marketing. "Holistic Package Design and Consumer Brand Impressions." [online article] Available at:
https://archive.ama.org/archive/AboutAMA/Pages/AMA%20Publications/AMA%20Journals/Journal%20of%20Marketing/TOCs/Summary%20May%2008/Holisticjmmay08.aspx

[Accessed 7th December]

All images are screen shots from the study above.