How Packaging Can Convince Customers to Purchase a Product
"Packaging can be a theatre, it can create a story.”
- Steve Jobs
What is the first thing a customer notices when shopping for a product?
Yeah, it is packaging.
It is the first thing they interact with before shopping for the product. But the role of packaging is more than that. It also influences their buying decision.
A book might not be judged by its cover, but a product is mostly judged by its packaging.
According to one study, 7 in 10 consumers admit that packaging design can influence their purchasing decision. After all, packaging tells a story, creates the tone and ensures a tangible experience for the customer.
An article published in the journal Psychology and Marketing explains how our brain reacts to various types of packaging. The study found that viewing attractive packaging leads to more intense brain activity. It also triggers activity in brain areas related to rewards, while unattractive packaging stirs negative emotions.
Here we will walk through the benefits of packaging for your product and how you can determine the right one.
First of all, let’s find out how packaging attracts customers to buy your products.
Protecting the Products:
Product packaging ensures that the product stays safe throughout its transit. This way, they reach safely and intact to the stores and customers. Poorly packaging products are vulnerable to damages, thereby spoiling your customer’s experience with them.
Differentiating Your Brand from Others:
There are many products on the market striving for your buyer’s attention. Certain goods come in the same size, shape, and style of packaging, creating a line of indistinguishable brands coming from the same factory.
Therefore, your brand packaging should stand out and look different from similar products on the same shelve.
By making your packaging look unique, you can create instant recognition and authority within your genre, leading to higher sales and visibility.
Here I would like to mention Caption Morgan’s Cannon Blast that comes in a unique container. The bottle is shaped like a cannonball. This way, the product not only represents the product name but also attracts the eye and looks different from its competitors.
Here you can make your brand looks unique by working over two key elements of packaging given below:
Colorful Graphics can be used more effectively to establish your brands through color recognition (Think Coke’s red and white shades).
Shapes are a key to attract attention, especially when bottles and other packages are formed in the shape of your products. For example, weight loss supplements packed in curvy-body jars or kid’s nutrition coming in a bear-shaped bottle look amazingly different.
Packaging Attracts Customers:
This is no brainer.
A visual presentation of packaging attracts customers and convinces them to pick up a product, explore its uses and find out if it is worth buying.
Simply put, it is the selling point as it delivers a sense of quality while reflects the brand image.
Color and design in packaging can have a striking effect on shopping behaviors. And it can trigger an urge in a customer to buy it the moment they see it. An attractive packaging beckons the consumer and encourages impulse buying.
Symbols, colors, texture, and styling create instant recognition and persuade a customer to make a quick buying decision.
Priming the Customer:
If the wrapper looks good, it must taste good.
This is how our subconscious association develops with good packaging and good tasting food. Simply put, if the cookie looks good on the packaging, then we tend to assume that it must taste good too.
The use of words like “delicious” “nutty and chewy” “crispy” and “juicy” as descriptors enhances the effect. This is termed as priming. It means that you are subconsciously explaining about taste and feel of the products to the customers.
The mind is likely to accept the information and believes it to be true. If we are told somebody is good then our mind has already formed a positive judgment before interacting with that person. The same goes for the product.
Providing Information:
The packaging is more than a label for a product. It provides important information like ingredients, directions for use, features, and benefits. Packaging also features customer service information like contact details for feedback and queries.
Strengthening Logo and Branding:
Branding elements like logos, tag lines, and product characters are consistent over the packaging. These elements create instant recognition. For example, when you think of Coke, the first thing to strike your mind is its white cursive logo. Similarly, a simple “M” sign is an identity of McDonald while Jaguar is recognized by its leaping cat logo. This way, logos, and symbols have become the first identity of any business.
HOW TO USE PACKAGING FOR YOUR PRODUCTS
So you must have understood how packaging benefits your products.
But that doesn’t mean any kind of packaging would suit your product. Poor or inferior packaging can turn off the customers, thereby affecting the sales. Therefore, it is important to plan your packaging carefully, especially according to your product and customers as well.
Here’s how…
Identify Your Customers:
Who are your customers? Are they kids? Are they women or elders? The point is here to identify your customers and create packaging accordingly. For example, if your product is made for an auto mechanic, a packaging with bright pinks and purples and cursive fonts on the labeling may not attract them.
Think Over the Functionality:
Is the packaging easy to use, store and carry?
Make sure to keep your packaging functional. For example, generally, all ketchup brands are available in sachets and bottles for “on-the-way” and home use respectively.
Maintain Transparency:
Packaging shouldn’t mislead the customers in any manner.
For example, a simple chocolate flavored biscuit may be disappointing if it comes with a wrapper depicting a cookie drenched in chocolate syrup. Don’t go overboard with such exaggeration.
Be Careful with Typography:
Make sure the letters look legible and readable as well. The color should match the overall appearance of the packaging.
Bottom Line:
Packaging ensures protection, marketing, uniqueness and branding to your products. It positively impacts a brand’s image if done right. To sum up, packaging matters both in terms of brand value and product safety. To make the maximum of your product packaging, make sure to plan it according to your target audience. What do you think? Let me know by commenting below.
Author Bio: My name is Debra Weiss. I am writer at iSell Packaging and I have experience of over 25 years in the technology of flexible packaging materials, machinery, measures, processes, etc. In the leisure time, I love to travel with my family.d
To learn more about Debra you may visit her Contributor Page
