Beyond the Package: How Visual and Verbal Design Cues Drive Consumer Evaluation Through Early Perceptual Mechanisms

Blog post based on the master's thesis of Giulia Cini

The importance of packaging design

Packaging plays a central role in contemporary food and beverage markets. At the point of decision, for example, in a supermarket, consumers are exposed to thousands of products but attend to only a small subset. They often engage with individual packages for just seconds, making effective packaging design a critical determinant of whether a product enters consumers’ consideration sets. Understanding how packaging design influences consumer responses has become both a managerial and academic priority.

Academic research has long demonstrated that packaging design affects consumer evaluations and behaviour. Visual cues such as colour, imagery, layout, and visual complexity, as well as verbal elements including text and claims, have been shown to influence liking, perceived quality, and purchase intention (Underwood, 2003; Creusen & Schoormans, 2004; Orth & Malkewitz, 2008). Much of this literature, however, focuses on what effects packaging design produces, rather than how these effects arise.

Processing of packs

Insights from consumer psychology suggest that responses to marketing stimuli unfold in stages. Before conscious deliberation occurs, consumers engage in early-stage processing that determines what is attended to, how effortful a stimulus is to process, and how clearly information is extracted. These early responses play a critical role in shaping subsequent evaluations and behavioural intentions, particularly in contexts characterised by brief exposure and high competition for attention (Ariely & Norton, 2008). Packaging design is especially relevant in this regard, as it is encountered visually, rapidly, and often without deliberate scrutiny at the point of decision (Clement, 2007).

This study examines how a set of visual and verbal packaging cues influences consumer responses through early-stage processing mechanisms. Specifically, the study tests whether the effects of these design cues on consumer outcomes measures are mediated by early consumer responses captured by AI-derived measures of attention, cognitive demand and clarity.

The conceptual model

Figure 1 visually shows the conceptual model of the thesis. For this study, a large benchmark study dataset comprising 190 FMCG packs has been used. The packages are coded (both manually and by using Python scripts) on different visual and verbal design elements. Whereas earlier studies have focused on the direct link between these packaging designs and outcome measures, this study examines whether the packaging design elements affect how consumers process the packs that subsequently impact consumer outcomes.

To model these different relations, various mediation models based on Hayes Process macro in R have been used.

Figure 1: Conceptual model

Indirect effects of visual design features on consumer outcomes

Logo centrality and brightness appear to have positive effects on outcomes through attention. The more central the brand logo is positioned on the pack, the higher the attention towards the pack, which subsequently positively impacts instant appeal and overall liking of the pack. Brighter packs are also able to generate more attention, which in turn positively affects the pack’s informativeness.

The more cluttered a pack (i.e., the more visual elements are on the pack), the more difficult it is to process the pack. Cognitive demand increases for visually cluttered packs. Maybe a bit counterintuitive, but this does lead to increased buying intent and higher scores for informativeness. Packs do have the ‘task’ to inform someone, and packs with more elements do contain more information which enables consumers to more deliberately decide whether or not to buy. Related to this, packs that contain product images are perceived as more clear and subsequently more appealing.

Verbal features, both text density and functional claims, did not have significant relations with processing mechanisms and subsequently consumer outcomes.

What does this mean for packaging designers?

Based on an extensive study on about 190 FMCG packs, we can provide some very concrete recommendations for brand managers. More specifically:

• Place the brand name more central on the pack as it enhances attention and consumer outcomes.

• Brighter packs are also able to generate higher attention, as they stand out more. Subsequently they are also perceived as more informative.

• Cluttered packs are not bad! The effort it takes to process them is higher, but this does lead to more positive consumer outcomes, such as buying intent. As they do contain more elements, they are perceived as more informative.

• If possible, showing what’s inside the pack works, as they are perceived as more clear and appealing.

References

• Ariely, D., & Norton, M. I. (2008). How actions create—not just reveal—preferences. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 12(1), 13–16.

• Clement, J. (2007). Visual influence on in-store buying decisions: An eye-track experiment on the visual influence of packaging design. Journal of Marketing Management, 23(9–10), 917–928.

• Creusen, M. E. H., & Schoormans, J. P. L. (2004). The different roles of product appearance in consumer choice. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 22(1), 63–81.

• Orth, U. R., & Malkewitz, K. (2008). Holistic package design and consumer brand impressions. Journal of Marketing, 72(3), 64–81.

• Underwood, R. L. (2003). The communicative power of product packaging: Creating brand identity via lived and mediated experience. Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice, 11(1), 62–76.