Testing the Waters!
How Consumers Help to Design Packaging
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Most people don’t decide what to buy until they are in the shop. No matter whether they’re shopping online or in a real supermarket, brands help them to get their bearings. That’s why the appearance of the packaging is important. But even if the products live up to what the brand promises, how do manufacturers know whether their products will appeal to consumers. Why not simply ask the consumers themselves?
Surveying the market
In this context, dialogue with the consumer conducted via good, old-fashioned market research has suddenly come back into vogue. Marketing people now need to engage in such dialogues before even beginning to market a product.
This is where Linked2Brands’ extensive experience comes in, offering a way for brands to raise their future chances of successful product placement and at the same time reduce the risk of expensive launches that turn out to be flops. The concept is the result of a cooperation with the private Nuremberg-based market research institute Psyma.
The ideal-case scenario
Once Linked2Brands has completed the brand design development or adaptation together with the client the final artwork is created. In many cases, however, there are several different design options for a brand new product or a product relaunch. Here the marketing people are suddenly spoilt for choice and have to make a decision. One design may seem more attractive or more promising than another, but is it really? Why not let the consumer make the choice, right from the start?
For this purpose Linked2Brands joined forces with Psyma to create a tool that is extremely simple: depending on what the client wants, the market research institute can have the design verified by a so-called online access panel consisting of up to 300 women and men aged between sixteen and sixty-five from the target user group. The panel are given two or three design options to choose from: the old and the new packaging, say, or the new design, the old design and the design of a competitor.
Being persuasive at the point of sale
One option is for the market researchers to place the selected designs on a virtual supermarket shelf but under real market conditions – i.e. positioned as they would be in reality and lined up next to a number of competing products. Anyone who knows that three out of four consumers do not make a purchase decision until they are in the shop standing in front of the shelf understands how important this is. Everything is at stake at the point of sale! Does my packaging reflect the brand values? Does it give the customer the brand experience? Is the brand tangible, even? And can it hold its own against the competition? This is where brands provide consumers with a point of orientation.