Only relying on personal experience and intuition is difficult to effectively evaluate complex packaging. When many products (including many competing products in the competition) are displayed on the shelves, there is a battlefield between the products. Consumer response to product packaging can truly explain the problem. This kind of evaluation is the most realistic. Evaluation method.
This is exactly where the evaluation of some packaging developments is at a loss. Brand managers and packaging designers are trying to evaluate the impact of packaging in the absence of traditional competitive environment, just as it is difficult to guess a meaning of a word that is not in a sentence.
What we want is a good way of simulating a realistic environment so that the evaluation we get is closer to the real situation. The overall performance of packaging design in the market can be measured from three aspects:
1. Impact, which is a measure of the ability of a package to "stand out from the crowd."
2, Findability (Findability): It is to determine how consumers can focus on the target package in many products.
3. Imagery: It evaluates the "thought" and "feeling" conveyed by the package.
Let us look at the two best evaluation methods: eye-tracking and Internet-based surveys. These two methods have advantages, but also pay attention to their potential shortcomings.
Method one: eye tracking method
The method is to put consumers in a realistic environment to examine the packaging design. The respondent observed the packaging placed on the shelf while the researcher used a passive device to track the movement of his gaze. Researchers determine where their eyes go and how long they stay at a particular point. This can measure the noticeability of a package.
The eye tracking method has four advantages:
First, the sample size is greater than the number of focused groups. This method allows brand managers and packaging designers to make statistical predictions from a large number of respondents' data, and the prediction is more accurate.
Second, it actually reflects shopping behavior. The eye tracking method does not have the disadvantages of discussion or group dynamics affecting individual behavior.
Third, the place where eyeball tracking is used is a competitive environment where many products on the shelves compete.
Fourth, the eye tracking method is more or less passive. Its focus is on consumer reactions rather than consumer ideas and opinions.
However, eye-tracking methods also have their drawbacks: There is no definitive evidence that the time the eyes have fallen on a particular package is related to the sales volume or the overall impression of the package.
When you carelessly look at something, there may be only a strange voice or thought that will make you regain consciousness. When you are doing eye-tracking research, you don’t have to pay attention to this thing when you look at something, that is, you don’t necessarily know something about it.
In addition, eye-tracking methods, like face-to-face group focus groups, usually require central locations for investigations and research, and these locations themselves have some drawbacks. The fixed-point survey method will introduce differences in demographic statistics and geographic locations because the eye-tracking study is only focused on a small number of locations. Participants may also exhibit significantly different characteristics from the general population.
Why does this happen? Because only certain types of people go to shopping malls - this is the most common place for fixed-point surveys. Therefore, the respondent's response may be very different from the target consumer of the product. At the same time, we must consider the impact of the investigation itself. Is there a device that measures the movement of people's eyes in a shopping mall?
The eye tracking method is similar to the group discussion method in that the existence of an investigator will inevitably affect the respondent's response behavior.
Therefore, in the evaluation of packaging, although the eye tracking method may be better than the group interview method, the use of eye tracking method requires brand managers and packaging designers to carefully consider the restrictions. For the cost of the eye-tracking study, it costs much more than the panel discussion.
Method Two: Internet Survey
The Internet has paved a new path for packaging market research. Many traditional offline survey methods have been transferred to the Internet for online surveys. After about 20 years, the method of telephone interview surveys took the place of face-to-face interviews, and Internet surveys became a widely accepted method that took less than five years.
The following five factors have prompted the Internet to become a data collection tool:
1. The cost of each survey visit is relatively low, especially the investigation of a large number of samples.
2. The collection of data and data is faster. The Internet survey method is 25% to 75% faster than traditional survey techniques.
3. Professional online survey access weighting techniques can eliminate potential sample biases.
4. The difficulty of conducting telephone interviews has increased, and more and more call screenings and registrations have failed to accept telephone surveys. This has become one of the biggest problems in telephone interviews.
5. There are fewer and fewer shopping malls providing survey sites. This trend makes offline surveys expensive and less reliable.
When using Internet method to evaluate packaging design, it has the advantages of high speed, low cost, wide geographical distribution, and no investigator bias.
Brand managers can also use the Internet to create a competitive environment, as well as more stringent time controls for respondents to observe packaging. In the packaging design process, to evaluate the visual impact of packaging on consumers, a successful survey project has at least two prerequisites: First, a "real" packaging image; Second, there is an immersive The feeling is that there is a process like the customer sees the package in the store.
The American online market research company Harris Interactive recently developed a new online interactive tool, Shelf Impact, which uses a special image file to make the image very clear even when it is small. With this effective tool, the above two goals can be achieved.
In the webpage, various competitive brand products are placed and placed on the shelves at the same time. Consumers look at packages as if they were buying products in stores. Such surveys save money and time, and do not require sites.
In addition to the special image files, the Shelf Impact technology is another important technology that controls the time when the respondent watches the packaged image on the screen. The “flashing†of a packaged picture is a bit like the method of a visual memory test (or speedometer) - an instrument that quickly projects a series of images onto the screen to test the visual, memory, and learning capabilities.
The working process of Shelf Impact technology is:
First, the respondent visited the webpage and spent a short time looking at the packaging on a shelf; then, the computer screen displayed all the packages and prompted the respondent to recall and identify as many packages as possible.
The second process is called discovery capability. It determines how difficult it is for the respondent to indicate the location of a package among a number of competitors.
The respondent previewed the image of the individual package, and then the screen flashed a shelf package, including the target brand's package. Next, the respondent saw an empty shelf with a corresponding grid and asked the respondent to place the target brand's packaging in the corresponding position on the shelf.
The last aspect of Shelf Impact is imagery. Measure the properties of the package, the subjects' likes, dislikes, and interest in buying.
Author: Kwong Yin Feng
Reprinted from: "China Packaging Industry"