First impressions are everything, especially in the world of product marketing. If your product doesn’t stand out on the shelves it won’t sell.
The UK food retail market is densely populated with endless options to suit every mood and any budget, so naturally it is a market with a huge amount of competition. Packaging is the representation of a product and a brand, and it is the main device used to encourage customer purchases.
There are countless studies delving deep into the effect of packaging on buying behaviour, but what if its effect transcends the shelf in the supermarket? What is the influence of the packaging once it has travelled all the way into the consumer’s home, to the final moment where they take a seat, and tuck into the highly anticipated treat? Will that product taste any better or worse just because of the look of the packaging it was cased within? Do we judge a biscuit by its tin?
Wine and beer connoisseurs understand the value of storing different beverages in different bottle shapes, and they even take it as far as serving products in specifically designed glasses. This isn’t purely for aesthetics; they argue that it can really affect the flavour of a wine or beer. It is as damaging to the flavour to serve Pinot Grigio in a mug as it is to serve it warm. So where does the flavour of food stand on this front?
Our senses are at constant war with our surroundings; sight, sound and smell can all affect how a product tastes, so it is essential that food packaging designers take all of this into consideration. Our senses also deteriorate with age, with sight, touch and taste all starting to diminish by the time we reach our 50s. Packaging needs to work even harder to entice this customer demographic.
Packaging sets up an expectation for a product’s flavour, whether a brand intends it to or not. Research by Charles Spence, professor of experimental psychology at the University of Oxford, found that the packet colours for salt and vinegar and cheese and onion crisps can affect the flavour of the crisp. Spence stated that many of the subjects tasted the colour of the crisp packet, not the flavour itself. If the subject had a strong association with green packaging meaning cheese and onion, they would then taste that flavour, even if they were eating a salt and vinegar crisp.
Supermarket ranges have perfectly tapped into this perception. Generally, supermarkets have four tiers of branding: from least to most expensive, they are standard supermarket brands, core supermarket own label brands, non supermarket brands (such as Heinz) and the premium supermarket ranges (such as Sainsbury’s Taste The Difference). Not only do these ranges provide a variety in price, but they also suggest a difference in quality.
Using Sainsbury’s as an example, the packaging of their basic range is simple with two colours used throughout the entire range, white and orange. The packaging is accompanied by either a photograph of the product, or a cartoon image, usually the latter. Sainsbury’s core range has had an injection of colour and often imitates the style of branded products, using primary colours with little embellishment, whereas Sainsbury’s premium Taste The Difference range uses a rich purple as the brand colour across the product range – a colour highly associated with luxury. The font has even received an upgrade across the packaging ranges from a handwritten style, to sans-serif, to serif.
“Package imagery can generate perceptions of flavour and product quality”
Studies have already shown that packaging can have adverse effects on how a product tastes. A study examining how “Package images modulate flavour perception for orange juice” used four different sets of images to represent orange juice, with each image having various levels of pleasantness or distastefulness. These were then used in a series of taste tests, all containing the same orange juice. The study found that pleasant packaging images gave the perception that the juice was fresher, tasted nicer and also had a better aroma. This study strongly suggests that package imagery can generate perceptions of flavour and product quality.
Imagery and colour clearly have their part to play in perceived flavour, but does brand snobbery ever trick our taste buds? Tesco experienced a value range overhaul in 2012 after unveiling that customers “didn’t feel comfortable” purchasing from their infamous blue and white-striped range. Their rebrand included a new name, Everyday Value, to normalise their products, and retro images with links to the product such as kitchen utensils on the baked beans. The packaging now has a burst of colour and is a stark contrast to its predecessor. The packaging undoubtedly increased sales of the value range, but it could also have transformed the perceived quality of the products within the range, and also their flavour.
Tesco’s Finest* range also experienced a brand overhaul in September 2013, dropping their uppercase F but retaining the asterisk. Their consistent use of black as the base for their packaging, combined with the chalkboard style font, gives the range an artisan aesthetic, which coincides with consumer desire for authentic food with clear provenance. Their finest* label is now foil blocked, enhancing their message of quality. The finest* range prides itself on delivering the highest quality food, using carefully selected specialist ingredients, which Tesco wanted to make sure was portrayed in the packaging. The change in design resulted in a coherent brand image whilst still enabling each product of the range to have a unique twist.
What’s on the outside can have a real influence on the product inside. Not only by persuading customers to make a purchase, but also by enhancing their perception of the product, ensuring customers have a quality experience from the shelf in a supermarket to their kitchen table. So next time you’re tucking into your latest impulse purchase, take a moment to consider whether it’s the product or the packaging you’re enjoying more.
Nikki Clark is the marketing manager for The Benson Group, giving her expert knowledge of the packaging design industry and an inside look at buying behaviours.
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