“IMPACT OF PACKAGING, BRANDING, LABELLING FOR NEW PRODUCT ON CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR IN MODERN AGE”
Anshu Singh
Research Scholar Noida International Univesity, Gautam Budh Nagar, Grater Noida, UP.
Dr. Tarun Kushwaha Associate Professor,
Prestige Institute of Management and Research, Indore
Abstract:
Packaging performs a central role as a medium in the marketing mix, in specifying the character of new products, in promotional campaigns, as a pricing pattern, and as a tool to create shelf impact. Packaging is usually considered as the most utmost form of advertising at the very crucial point of entire in the journey of purchasing: the point of purchase." It reflects the level of creativity, innovation, modernism, cutting-edge qualities the brand might possess. The place of packaging in marketing has become entirely significant since it is one of the channel companies can capture consumers to take notice of products.
Packaging is the science, art, and technology of enclosing or protecting products for distribution, storage, sale, and use. Basic objectives of packaging includes Physical protection, Barrier protection, Containment or agglomeration, Information transmission, Marketing, SecurityAnti-counterfeiting Packaging and ConveniencePortion control. On other side Labeling is any written, electronic, or graphic communications on the packaging or on a separate but associated label. Basic objectives of labeling are brand identification, providing the information and promotion.
Food labelling might refer to naming a product or the listing of ingredients. The key objectives of a food label is to provide information for the consumer, help sell the product and assist the consumer in making comparable food choices. Now a days marketers are using packaging as a tool for marketing their products. Packaging is the first point of contact with the brand for a consumer product (Rundh,2005). Packaging design an important issue in the growing use of packaging as a marketing tool for selfservice, since approximately 73% of products are sold on a self-service bases at the point of sale (Silayoi&Speece,
The importance of packaging attributes: a conjoint analysis approach, 2007). This paper will try to find out how product packaging and labelling effect the consumer decision making process when they purchase food products. With this also try to identify the different elements of packaging to attract more and more customers.
Introduction:
Packaging can be described as all the acts of designing and. The place of packaging in marketing has become entirely significant since it is one of the channel companies can capture consumers to take notice of products. For this reason, it is necessary to understand various packaging factors which prompts and attracts customer to buy certain product.
Packaging is the first point of contact with the brand for a consumer product (Rundh, 2005). Packaging design an important issue in the growing use of packaging as a marketing tool for self-service, since approximately 73% of products are sold on a self-service bases at the point of sale (Silayoi&Speece, The importance of packaging attributes: a conjoint analysis approach, 2007).
On average, urban supermarkets carry 50 000 items and the typical shopper passes 300 items per minute (Rundh, 2005). The packaging must, therefore, perform many of the sales tasks, including making an overall favourable impression and helping influence impulsive purchasing. This is in contrast to the secondary function of packaging that is used for storage, shipping and supply chain that consumers do not see but that is still necessary in the distribution of the product to trade (Sehrawet&Kundu, 2007).
Pinya and Mark (2004) argue that FMCG are low involvement products, as consumers do not search extensively for information about the brands, evaluate their characteristics, or make a weighty decision on which brand to buy. Based on previous literature, four main packaging elements are argued to affect the consumer’s purchase decision. These elements broadly fall into two categories:
1) Visual elements consisting of colours, graphics, design size, shape and packaging. These attributes relate to the affective side of decision-making.
2) The information elements relating to the contents provided and technologies used in the packaging, and more likely to address the cognitive side of decision-making, such as educating the customer and the overall image of the brand (Silayoi&Speece, Packaging and Purchase Decisions, 2004).
The use of colour is obvious and well- developed and can be effective because of strong brand associations. However, people in different cultures develop their own unique colour affinity (Silayoi&Speece, Packaging and Purchase Decisions, 2004). Companies also use packaging attributes such as graphics that include layout and the use of powerful product photography, to create an image to help in attracting and sustaining attention (Silayoi&Speece, The importance of packaging attributes: a conjoint analysis approach, 2007).
Grossman and Wisenblit (1999) argue that for low involvement products, marketing communications need to have a strong impact, particularly as images affect consumer decisions, making graphics and colour crucial. For many consumers of low involvement, the packaging becomes the product, particularly because of impressions formed on initial contact. Rettie and Brewe (2000) argue that the recall is better for verbal stimili when the copy is on the right hand side of the package, and better for non-verbal stimli when it is on the left hand side of the package (Silayoi&Speece, Packaging and Purchase Decisions, 2004).
Objectives of Study:
To determine how of packaging influence on the consumer buying behavior.
To find out whether packaging elements effect on the consumer buying behavior. Namely, to check how consumer perceives and values colors, shape, size and labeling of the package.
To know how color of packaging matters consumer in purchase of product.
To estimate the preference of consumer for the product packaging having attractive shape.
To assess how adequate size of product attract consumer.
To measure the relative importance of packaging labeling for the consumers.
To know whether the consumer change the FMCG product they purchase as the packaging changes.
To find out which of the aesthetic elements of packaging are most appealing to customer to whom they attract towards the purchase of product.
Elements of a good Package Design:
A package designer aims for the following goals: (1) to attract the buyer; (2) to communicate message to the buyer; (3) to create desire for the product; and (4) to sell the product.
Attraction of the Buyer: Package must have enough shelf impact to stand out among a myriad of packages. The package must draw attention to itself. This can be done through the effective choice of colour, shape, copy, trademark, logo, and other features.
In cigarettes, white packaging suggests low tar while red packagingsuggests a strong flavour. Companies targeting Asian markets have to be careful in choosing packaging colours and logos. Failure to consider cultural factors may be disastrous. Still another communication role of packaging is providing information to the consumer through the label or immediate package. Information on contents, instructions on use and information required by law should assist rather than confuse the customer. Manufacturers and marketers are guilty of placing instructions that are often hard to read without a magnifying glass. When the instructions are readable, they are frequently vague and ambiguous. Thus, instructions should be tested for understanding since lack of instruction clarity leads to errors that might become a reason for no repeat purchase.
Creating a Desire for the Package: The package can convince the consumer that the product could fill the need or satisfy an inner desire. Packages usually add value like the convenience now being offered by microwaveable packaged foods. A shampoo or lotion bottle can shaped in such a way that its normal position is inverted (less time to remove a viscous product), or it can be easily hung on the shower handle. Special pump dispensers have promoted the liquid soap form over the traditional bar soap. Convenience must also consider the ease of disposability of the package. Advances in packaging technology have kept pace with the demand for convenient packaging. In addition, rising consumer affluence appears to show that consumers are willing to pay more for convenience, appearance, dependability, and prestige of better packages .
Selling the Product: Package must not only sell the product but also should create desire for repeat purchases. This can be in the form of reusable features, special giveaways or easy dispensing devices which promote repeat sales and add value.
The role of Packaging:
The primary function of packaging is to protect the product against potential damage while transporting, storing, selling and exploiting a product] and to ensure the convenience during performance of these activities. Sogn-Grundvag&Ostli have indicated the importance of packaging in the case of grocery, when consumers buy unbranded products. Seeing that most consumers tend to touch products before purchasing, they treat product packaging as a tool for protecting consumers from contamination, for allowing them to touch products without restraint & without any need to avoid smudging their hands.
They propose to use packaging with a ―window, in order to allow consumers to evaluate product by its appearance at the same time reducing ―consumer uncertainty regarding quality by branding the product and labelling it i.e. to communicate to consumer adequate message about product. It could be stating that in length of time a function of identification and communication became vital important especially for consumerproducts in the group of convenience goods.
consumer‘s attention and transmit adequate value of product to consumer in the short period right in the place of sale. Therefore there is a necessity to explore package and its elements in more detail, in order to understand which of these elements are the most important for consumers purchase decision.
The Role and Importance of Labeling in Decision Making :
A product provides an array of cues that a consumer uses as the basis for making judgements about which product they will purchase (Cox, 1962). Consumers form a composite judgement about which product to purchase by going through a process in which the consumer identifies, evaluates, and integrates some or all of the various items of information (i.e. cues) associated with the product. The cues that consumers use when making purchase decisions have been classified as intrinsic or extrinsic cues (Jacoby, Olsen, and Haddock, 1971).
Intrinsic cues are those cues which if changed would change the physical product itself (e.g. taste, nutrition content, size, shape, and colour of a product). Extrinsic cues refer not to the physical product itself, but to other cues provided (e.g. price, store image, label, advertising). The important distinction to note is that cues of an extrinsic nature can be supplied by either the producer or the seller, whilst the intrinsic cues are determined by the product itself.
In order to determine the importance of providing a label on an agricultural or horticultural product (i.e. providing an extrinsic cue), we need to focus upon those product cues of an intrinsic nature which are of more importance to consumers in their initial assessment of the desirability of a product. Intrinsic cues pose further problems for consumers as they can be classified as either hidden intrinsic cues or revealed intrinsic cues (Riezebos, 1994). Hidden intrinsic cues are those product attributes which cannot easily be physically identified by the consumer before purchase, (e.g. the flavour or taste of the product, or the durability and reliability of a product). Revealed intrinsic cues include those product attributes which the consumer can identify and assess visually or physically, (e.g. the shape, size and colour of a product).
The discussion to this point has suggested that consumers form judgements about the desirability of products using a combination of extrinsic, revealed intrinsic and hidden intrinsic cues. The combination of cues used depends on which product attributes are important to a consumer in making a purchase decision. Howard and Sheth (1969) suggested that choice among product category alternatives can be viewed as a hierarchical process.
Hierarchical processing describes how a consumer compares groups of alternatives and subsequently eliminates products in order to reduce the choice set (Hauser, 1986). Before choice among product alternatives can take place, consumers search for potential products to include in their final choice set. During this search, a consumer is looking for specific attributes to use in forming a judgement about the desirability of a product.
large red apple for display purposes and is not concerned with the taste of the apple) then they can physically select products for their final choice set. The consumer will subsequently eliminate those products which do not meet their final selection criteria by physical assessment. However if the important cue for a product was hidden (e.g. the sweetness of an apple), then the consumer will have difficulty assessing product attributes which are consistent with their final selection criteria, and therefore may experience difficulty finding suitable candidates to include within the choice set.
To aid consumers in their search for the desired bundle of attributes, the seller can make an extrinsic cue available (e.g. a label) to act as a proxy for the important hidden cues. Consequently, consumers can make judgements about important hidden cues, and successfully eliminate those undesirable products from their choice sets. For example, as an indicator of the different taste characteristics different varieties of apples possess, retailers provide an extrinsic cue in the form of a variety label. Consumers subsequently use this cue to select the variety of apple that has the taste characteristics which correspond to their preference.
BRANDING AND CUSTOMERS:
Well-recognized brands make shopping feasible in a modern economy. Think of the problem of buying groceries, for example, if you had to consider seriously the advantages and disadvantages of each of 10,000 items every time you went to a supermarket. Many customers are willing to buy new things, but having gambled and won, they like to buy a ‘sure thing’ thereafter.
Customers may even be wiling to pay a premium for brands which they have tried successfully. There is considerable evidence that if consumers used well-known brands rather than high prices as an indication of good quality, they might be further ahead. One American study of grocery products found that the known brands usually had fairly consistent quality, but there was little assurance that a high price meant high quality. Lower-class customers may buy well-recognized manufactures’ brands, not for status, but for assurance of quality within their more narrowly perceived range of choices.
Other customers, however, seem to be less concerned with the symbolic value. They seem to derive psychic satisfaction from the use of well-known branded articles, perhaps because they feel some of the status or prestige of the product may rub off on them.
Another important advantage of successful branding is that the brander may be able to carve out a market among loyal customers. Whether the brander is a manufacturer, wholesaler or retailer, this brand loyalty protects against competition, because the brander, in effect, is given a customer franchise by the customers. In other words, the brander achieves a monopolistic and competitive situation or even a little monopoly, and this gives greater control over marketing mix planning.
Or when selling oil to various competing wholesalers and retailers who do not want to compete directly with each other, the producers can offer them identical or almost identical products under different brand names. Such practices help explain why there are so many brands on the market.
Good brands can enhance the company’s name, simplifying the introduction of additional products. Or the company may use its own name as a brand for many of its products. This is of special importance in the industrial goods area, where branding of individual products is more difficult. Here, it is really the company’s total personality which it would like to project positively.
CONDITIONS FAVOURABLE TO BRANDING:
Most marketing managers accept branding as desirable and are primarily concerned with assuring the success of the brand name of the product(s) they are marketing. The following conditions would be favorable to successful branding:
1. The demand for the general product class or in the selected target market(s) should be large enough to support a profitable marketing plan.
2. The demand should be sufficiently strong so that the market price will offer a large enough margin over additional promotion cost to make the effort worthwhile.
3. It is best when there are economics of mass production. If the branding were really successful, the cost of production would decline with additional volume, thereby increasing profits.
4. The product quality being offered should be the best for the price in the market being served and the quality should be easily maintained.
5. The product should be easily identifiable by a brand or trade-mark. This is easier said than done. Many products do not lend themselves easily to conspicuous marking. Few consumers would like to have a furniture manufacturer’s label sewn conspicuously on their sofa or lounge chair. But if the label or mark is inconspicuous, then much of the brand prestige value is lost.
6. Consistent and wide-spread availability is necessary. When customers start using a brand, they should be able to continue finding it in their stores.
Five degrees of brand familiarity are useful for strategic planning;
1. Rejection
2. Non-recognition
3. Recognition
4. Preference,
5.Insistence.
These are self-explanatory. The degree of brand familiarity achieved by the brander (and competitors) obviously affects the planning for the balance of the marketing mix. It especially influences decisions on where the product should be made available and what promotion is needed. While the degree of brand familiarity achieved will have an important bearing on the development of a marketing mix, marketing research may be necessary to determine exactly what the firm has achieved and in which target markets.
In many situations, company executives feel their products have achieved or will achieve a higher degree of brand familiarity than is really the case, and they develop their marketing mixes accordingly. This self-delusion can only lead to overburdening the other ingredients in their marketing mixes. Studies show that some brands do not reach even the brand recognition stage. One study, for example, revealed that two out of every five homemakers could not even name the brand of furniture they owned.
CHOOSING A BRAND NAME:
Brand name selection is still an art, but management judgment has to enter because the matter is important. It is difficulty to pinpoint what constitutes a good brand name, because some of the successful brand names seem to defy even the obvious rules.
Many of these names, however, got started when there was relatively little competition. A good brand name can make a difference, helping to communicate something important about the company or its product. Just using the company’s name or a family member’s name is no longer adequate in our highly competitive markets. A good brand should be:
Short, simple and easy to spell and read;
Easy to recognize and remember;
Pleasing when read and easy to pronounce;
Not disagreeable sounding;
Pronounceable in only one way;
Adaptable to packaging or labeling requirements;
Available for use (not in use by another firm);
Pronounceable in all languages (for gods to be exported);
Not offensive, obscene or negative;
WHO SHOULD DO THE BRANDING?
Frequently wholesalers and retailers decide to use their own brands in preference to manufacturers’ brands commonly called National Brands because of their promotion across the nation or in large regions. Such manufacturers’ or national brands include Kellog’s, Stokely, Whirlpool, International Harvest, Sheetrock and IBM.
The term national is not always accurate, however, since many wholesalers’ and retailers’ brands have achieved in national distribution and are advertised nationally, while some manufacturers’ products have only regional distribution. For this reason, instead of the term national brands, we can use manufacturers’ brands. These latter brands’ frequently are called ‘Private brands’.
But to reduce confusion, we call the wholesalers’ and retailers’ brands dealer brands. So far we have been focusing on the value of branding in general but branding has some special advantage and disadvantage for dealers. This is especially relevant with respect to whether they should use manufacturers’ brands or develop their own dealer brands.
Andes mints are just one example of excessive packaging used to misrepresent the amount of product inherent in a package, making the package appear to have more product than it actually does.
Packaging should be used only where needed
Packaging plays an important part in preventing loss or damage to the packaged-product (contents).
Packages should not be littered.
Packaging engineers continue to work toward reduced packaging.
Introduction to minimizing packaging
The purpose of packaging is to protect a product and keep it fresh.
Despite the benefits that packaging provides, many products are ridiculously over-packaged, which is annoying to those who have to pay to throw it away.
Wal-Mart, for example, received quite a bit of favourable publicity when it unveiled a packaging ‘scorecard' to its suppliers demanding that they reduce their packaging by at least 5% (Wal-Mart discovered that up to 20% of its garbage was directly attributed to packaging waste).
The new package is more cube-shaped, which lowers packaging expenses by 10–20 cents per container.
COMMON USES OF PACKEGING:
Physical protection: The objects enclosed in the package may require protection from, among other things, mechanical shock, vibration, electrostatic discharge, compression, temperature, etc.
Information transmission: Packages and labels communicate how to use, transport, recycle, or dispose of the package or product. With pharmaceuticals, food, medical, and chemical products, some types of information are required by governments. Some packages and labels also are used for track and trace purposes.
Marketing: The packaging and labels can be used by marketers to encourage potential buyers to purchase the product. Package graphic design and physical design have been important and constantly evolving phenomenon for several decades. Marketing communications and graphic design are applied to the surface of the package and (in many cases) the point of sale display, examples of which are shown here:.
Convenience: Packages can have features that add convenience in distribution, handling, stacking, display, sale, opening, re-closing, use, dispensing, reuse, recycling, and ease of disposal.
Barrier protection: A barrier from oxygen, water vapor, dust, etc., is often required. Permeation is a critical factor in design. Some packages contain desiccants or oxygen absorbency to help extend shelf life. Modified atmospheres or controlled atmospheres are also maintained in some food packages. Keeping the contents clean, fresh, sterile and safe for the intended shelf life is a primary function.
Labeling and Customers:
A label is a carrier of information about the product. The attached label provides customers with information to aid their purchase decision or help improve the experience of using the product. Labels can include:
Care and use of the product
Recipes or suggestions
Ingredients or nutritional information
Product guarantees
Manufacturer name and address
Weight statements
Sell by date and expiration dates
Warnings
Symbols Used in Labels:
Many types of symbols for package labeling are nationally and internationally standardized. For consumer packaging, symbols exist for product certifications, trademarks, and proof of purchase. Some requirements and symbols exist to communicate aspects of consumer use and safety.
For example, the estimated sign notes conformance to EU weights and measures accuracy regulations. Examples of environmental and recycling symbols include the recycling symbol, the resin identification
code, and the "green dot."
Advantages of Labeling for Customers
The advantages of labeling were more obvious in the formative years of special education (mid-1940s to early 1970s), than they are now. For instance, without the category of learning disabilities, advocates for these children would have had no rallying point to promote educational programs. Imagine how ineffective scientists would be in raising money for cancer research if they had no name for it. The advantages of labeling can be summarized as follows:
1. Federal and local funding of special education programs are based on categories of disabilities.
2. Labeling enables professionals to communicate with one another because each categorical label conveys a general idea about learning characteristics.
4. Labeling the disability spotlights the problem for the public. Labeling can spark social concern and aid advocacy efforts.
5. Labeling may make the majority without disabilities more tolerant of the minority with disabilities. In other words, the actions of a child identified as having intellectual disability might be tolerated, whereas the behavior of a peer without intellectual disability would be criticized.
6. Labeling has led to the development of specialized teaching methods, assessment approaches, and behavioral interventions that are useful for teachers of all students.
Conclusion:
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