This is a literature review paper for summarizing the influence of product packaging on consumer preferences in selecting a product. Key attributes of packaging such as color, shape and imagery is discussed and a conclusion based on the literature review is provided along with the scope for future research

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Influence of Product Packaging on Consumer Preference: A Human Factors Perspective
Vanshaj Lalit Handoo
Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Texas A&M University
Consumer product marketing in the 21st century is becoming increasingly complex. Marketers today make
more capital intensive decisions on a weekly basis than ever before in human history. With increasing costs
of marketing activities including advertising, discounts and promotional campaigns it has become more
challenging than ever to convert every dime spent on marketing into a sale. Product packaging has been an
integral part of marketing decision making process since explosion of consumer packaged goods in the
industrial revolution. In this report, I explore the key attributes of product packaging that influence a
consumer’s preference when selecting a product from a shelf in a store and thus converting into a successful
sale for the manufacturer.
INTRODUCTION
Product packaging is that external surface which covers
and protects the product it contains. It is generally considered
to be something that is separate from the product itself but
oftentimes can be found to a part of the exterior of the product
as is seen in the case of mobile phones. Although protection
from potential damage to the product has been the primary
purpose of product packages, their role with a marketing
perspective to attract consumers (Kreuzbauer and Malter, 2005)
and influence their decision making at the point of sale has
gained more significance and priority in the 21st century. With
increasing competition in the market, marketers across the
globe now seek scientifically proven methods in product
packaging to have that statistical advantage over their
competitors not just for recruiting new consumers but also for
retaining them. The motivation for this paper comes from my
interaction with marketing managers of one the most well-
known consumer goods manufacturer of the world and
witnessing their desire and daily struggle to achieve perfection
in product packaging.
Packages have multiple attributes including the product
design itself, the material the packages are made from, their
shape and size, their colors and the verbal, symbolic or pictorial
information displayed on them. There has been significant
research done on each one of these attributes individually in the
past but the interaction effects or combined effects of these
attributes, however, have not been the focus of any studies.
Careful study of product packaging often reveals contradictory
relationships between the various attributes of packaging. A
circular shape for package might be more emotionally
appealing but at the same time it may reduce the ease of use or
storage. In such a scenario, it is important to study the
interaction of these two attributes and arrive at robust sub
optimal solution.
Studying the psychological effects of product packaging
attributes individually on consumer preference by providing a
stimulus relating to a particular attribute and recording
responses of potential consumers to a scientifically designed
questionnaire is a common methodology employed by
researchers. Findings from such research have at times
confirmed marketing theories of consumer preference while at
times have been found to be contradictory. It is worthwhile to
note here that most studies involve a specific product or a
product category and that conclusions from a study of one
particular product category cannot be directly applied to
another.This is due to the phenomenon ofcontext that a product
category or a sample population inherently belongs to. As such
it is difficult to generalize any findings.
In this paper, however, I intend to closely knit together the
findings of various studies on individual product packaging
attributes from the perspective of marketing scientists. I will
explore all the various attributes including color, shape, size,
material and also the interaction among these. In this process,
we will come across various theories found in literature
concerning each of these attributes.
ATTRIBUTES OF PRODUCT PACKAGING
Product and packaging design
Product design is not often considered to be direct attribute
of product packaging. I, however, have expanded the strict
definition to include the actual product itself as the package.
This is the case with most electronic equipment like mobile
phones, computers and even cars where the exterior of the
finished product can be considered to be the packaging of the
product. Impact of final product design and aesthetics on
consumer psyche (Holbrook and Zirlin, 1985) and preferences
have been widely accepted and utilized by marketers in
developing marketing strategies. It is vital to note here that
product design includes all product features such as shape,
color, finish etc.
Kreuzbauer and Malter (2005) used the approach of
perceptual symbol systems from the theory of embodied
cognition to study the influence of minor yet apparently
significant changes in the shape element of product design on
the positioning of a European motorcycle brand KTM in the
mind of potentialconsumers. KTM, a world renowned off-road
motorcycle manufacturer based in Austria wanted to expand
their consumer base from off-road biking enthusiasts to general
street bikers.

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Figure 1. Evolution of KTM motorbikes from professionaloff-
road bikes to street bikes over the years. Adapted from
“Embodied Cognition & New Product Design: Changing
Product Form to Influence Brand Categorization” by
Kreuzbauer and Malter, 2005. The Journal of Product
Innovation Management 2005, 22:165-176. © 2005 Product
Development & Management Association
This strategy,known as line extension in marketing circles,
is commonly applied by marketers looking to expand their
product portfolio and reach out to more consumers. By
integrating the certain key design features of their off-road
bikes over a period of years into street bikes they were able to
attract new audiences while maintaining their unique brand
positioning.
Certain changes in the shape element of product design
communicate a new brand perception in the minds of potential
consumers thus allowing them to be more accepting to the new
product. This idea can be extended into introducing multiple
new products as line extensions and further increasing their
consumer base. However, determining what design elements
need to be changed and the frequency of these changes is the
key to a successfulline extension. Line extensions brought out
through perceptual changes of brand image in the consumers
mind, although seemingly profitable, should be used mindfully
used by marketers, as in making too many changes they risk
losing their unique brand image and the original consumerbase.
Emotional design: Emotional design is a modern aspect of
conventionalproduct design where the emotions that a product
package evokes are given equal importance as the utility or the
functionality of the product itself. Historically, establishment of
an emotional connect with a potentialconsumer has been,if not,
ignored at least considered less relevant to product design.
However, it has gained significant importance in recent years
and has been analyzed to be a successful consideration for
consumer product packaging. It is not surprising that emotions
such as pleasure, security, excitement, satisfaction etc. that a
product evokes at the point of purchase and even during its use
are key to the success of the product. The measurement and
quantification of this emotion is a challenge. Measurement of
emotions in the field of psychologicaland medical sciences has
been existing for years, but their application in the
understanding of consumer preferences has been rare. A
number of subjective and objective measurements schemes and
scales have been used with considerable success overthe years
across various product categories. Two widely used techniques
for subjective measurement of emotional response are Kansei
Engineering (Nagamachi, 2005) and Semantic Scales (Osgood
et al., 1967) while facial and vocal expressions are used to
objectively measuring emotional responses. Frameworks for
such measurements (Khalid and Helandar, 2006) have been
suggested forintegration in the design phase of the product and
its packaging. Measuring such emotional responses
appropriately and incorporating the findings in the design stage
of the product development prove to result in more successful
products.
Jordan (2002) has identified three distinct emotional stages
at which a product should ideally connect with its target
consumer audience. Firstly, it should satisfy the consumer with
its functionality and utility. This essentially allows the
consumer to carry out intended tasks the product is designed for
with any difficulty. The second stage involves the emotions
experienced when performing the tasks intended with the
product. For example, consider answering the following
questions – Is my wallet secure enough so that nothing falls out
of it accidentally? Is the chair comfortable? A positive response
to these indicates that the product design meets the secondary
stage of emotional connect with the consumer. Finally, in the
third stage the product design should exceed the expectations of
the consumer and elevate her emotional state. Driving a
German sports car is a case in point, where the customer feels
an emotional state which is beyond mere satisfaction. It is

3. ISEN 630 FALL 2015 Page 3 of 5
worth noting here that only when a product satisfies the first
stage can the product interact with consumer at the second stage
and so on.
Emotion is definitely a strong factor in the overall
experience a consumer has while using a product. It is
important, with this view, that the design or the product and the
package evokes positive feelings in the conscious and
subconscious mind of the consumer. A positive mind will
further enhance the userexperience while a negative mind will
deteriorate it even if the product performs its desired
functionality in completeness.
Color considerations
Color is believed to be the most influential of all packaging
attributes and has been extensively studied in the past.
Psychological effects of the use of colors in branding and
packaging have been documented as “emotions can be stirred
by color” (Tucker, 1987) and even more strongly as “whoever
controls color, controls the world” (Woodhuysen,1994). Brand
preferences influenced by the color of packaging have been
documented extensively in literature, where colors have been
found to have attractive powers (Grimes and Doole, 1998).
Over the years, marketers have realized that colors allow
consumer to develop a deeper psychological connection with
the brand. The positioning and the mind share of a brand can be
greatly influenced by the color used in branding and packaging.
Let us consider the cross-cultural considerations in the use of
color for product packaging.
Cross-cultural view on color perception: It is well
documented that colors have their independent significance in
minds of individuals based on their general association with
things in nature and the respective culture of the consumer.Red,
for example, is a color often used to signify dangerdue to blood
being red in color. On the other hand, green is associated to be
“natural” and is commonly used forbranding products that have
been manufactured from raw material directly present in nature
or products that are eco-friendly. While there are a lot of
similarities in the way colors are perceived by the general
population, there are also enough instances of contradictory
color perception due to socio-cultural or religious differences
across the world. In such a situation, it is difficult to create and
maintain a brand identity across culturalboundaries. As a result,
we do not often see multinational brands changing their
branding and packaging across countries and regions.If there is
a particular color that has been documented to relate positively
to a consumer base, then marketers are certainly known to
exploit this advantage to their benefit by means of new
packaging for an existing product or a line extension. However,
negative connotations of the colors of their international
branding are generally ignored as there is no unifying color that
would agree with all cultures. Table 1 below summarizes the
findings in literature for variation of perception of colors and
their significance across countries. Here positive connotations
imply a positive influence on the brand image while negative
connotations imply a negative influence.
Table 1. Difference in color perceptions across countries
Country
Color Positive Connotation Negative Connotation
Red
China, Denmark, Romania,
India, Japan, United States,
South Korea, Argentina Chad, Nigeria, Germany
Blue
India, United States,Japan,
South Korea, Netherlands Iran
Yellow China, Japan, South Korea
France, Germany,
Russia
Green
Japan, China, United States
(Good Taste)
Malaysia, Belgium,
United States (Envy)
Purple
China, South Korea, United
States Mexico, Poland, Japan
Black
China, South Korea, United
States
India, Japan, Germany,
Russia, Mexico
White
Australia, New Zealand,
United States Japan
(Multiple sources: Schiffman et al., 2001; Jacobs et al., 1991,
Schmitt, 1995; Neal et al., 2002; Grossman and Wisenblit,
1992; Hupka et al., 1997; Ricks, 1984)
Another important aspect of the differences in perception
of colors across cultures is their association with a gender.
While a color blue is generally considered feminine in
Netherlands, it is associated with the masculine gender in
Sweden (Neal et al. 2002). Similarly, the color red is of a bride’s
dress in China while it is considered to be generally masculine
in the United Kingdom and France (Neal et al. 2002). This
rather simple association essentially poses a challenge for
marketers who target either one of the two genders. It is not just
the gender that changes color perception. Other demographic
and social-economic factors like age, level of education and
place of residence (urban/rural) have also been documented to
have differences in color perceptions. Admittedly, there is no
clear solution to this challenge but there is always that option to
launch a new product or a line extension with a product
packaging design that would maximize the consumer base.
Material considerations
Material used for packaging is another important
consideration in the design product packaging. Materials used
for packaging generally have been associated with the utility
and ease of use of the product in the past. It is only more
recently that their psychological relation with product quality
and brand image perception has been studied in advanced
marketing research. This has significant implications in
consumerpackaged food industry where product attributes such
as taste,quality,purity and freshness assume higherpriority and
are the sole factors on which consumer satisfaction rests.

4. ISEN 630 FALL 2015 Page 4 of 5
Tough and hard packaging with chemically inactive
material is necessary for products that need to maintain high
quality levels and last longer on shelves in store and at
consumer homes. Often this can interfere negatively with the
desired ease of use of the product. However, with
experimentation and modern technology it should be possible
to arrive at a solution that satisfies the above requirements, if
not, to the best possible levels but at least to the most
pragmatically achievable levels. This sub optimal solution has
been found to achieve the primary goals of satisfaction
(McDaniel and Baker, 1977) in the food industry. Strong
packaging functions here as a visual cue which can be seen to
give a sense of higher product quality (Richardson, 1994).
When a consumer is not familiar with a product category or
unfamiliar with a brand in known product category it is the
visual cues provided by the exterior of the packaging, including
its material, that allow him to infer on the goodness of the
product.
Package imagery
It is a general belief across marketers of different products
that the displaying a pack shot of the product in mass media
communication like print and television is vital for the
identification and recollection of the brand at the point of sale.
However, the extension of this belief to packaging does not
seem obvious. Nonetheless, a large number of products
packages today have pictorial or non-verbal cues directly
indicating the product. Oftentimes, this imagery communicates
ideas relating to the utility of the product. For example,
packaged cheese generally has a picture of a cheese sandwich.
The question now becomes, is it better to use an image (non-
verbal cue) or verbal information for this important
communication at the point of purchase? To answer this
question convincingly, it is necessary to understand the
difference between pictorial and verbal information cues in
product packaging. Lutz and Lutz (1978) have defined package
imagery as that visual cue which contains at least one element
that is not an alphabet or a number. The most significant
advantage of using pictorial cues is that rate of information
transfer between from the product to the consumer is fast
(Alesandrini, 1982) which is of prime importance at the point
of purchase. Also, the message is more clearly received and
understood. Underwood et al. (2001) have documented that
influences of pictorial visual cues at the point of purchase are
not significantly different than the influences of verbal cues and
that the effectiveness of the communication through pictorial
cues is conditioned on category of the product and the
familiarity of the brand. As such, well known brands do not
benefit as much from the pictorial packaging while lesser
known brands seem to gain some benefit through the use of
pictorial cues.This is contradictory to popularmarketing theory
that a picture works better than words.
There has not been any significant research on the use of
pictorial cues in consumer product packaging when it is clearly
an area of interest for marketers across the world. The degree
of realism in the pictorial cue is also an aspect that need to be
considered. The question is not just the mere absence or
presence of information as stimulus but also how much
information.
Shape and size considerations
Package shape and size is another significant attribute of
product packaging. Over the years, we have seen the evolution
of packaging of the same product in an increasingly attractive
fashion. The curvy soda bottles of Coca Cola and Pepsi are a
classic example of the evolution of the shape attribute in
packaging. Package shape generally is seen to have a strong
correlation with the category the product belongs to. However,
it is also believed that a new and innovative form of shape is
essential to attract and recruit shopper that were previously
buying another brand in the same category. Folkes and Matta
(2004) have argued that packages of different shapes and sizes
confound shopper in such a way that it becomes difficult for
them to judge the actual volume and amount of product in the
package because consumers do not tend to spend enough time
to read through the labeling and information of competing
products (Cole and Balasubramanian, 1993). A package that
attracts the attention of a shoppergives rise to a psychological
bias about the quantity of product in the package. It is not just
the shape of the package that attracts the shopper. All other
attributes such as color, imagery and material also contribute to
the overall attractiveness of the package. The interaction of
shape orvolume attribute with every other product attribute can
thus be studied to arrive the right combinations for optimizing
the powers of attraction of a package. However, it is important
to note that the estimation of product volume in a package
becomes more and more accurate with repeated usage of the
product.With repeated use of the product, the apparent powers
of attraction of a package might be lost and at this time it is
essential to change the packaging through the use of
contemporary or futuristic design.The identification of the fact
that a package is no more able to attract new shoppers also
needs to be tracked by marketers by periodic surveying.
DISCUSSION
Consumer products have traditionally been sold by
advertising their intrinsic values in terms of their utility and thus
their ability to justify their existence. In the modern, with the
exponential growth in demand for consumer products,
marketers are willing to try out every trick in the bookto recruit
new consumers and also to maintain their current consumer
base. With marketing budgets crossing billions of dollars for
multinational consumer goods manufacturers, it is now
necessary to engage with the shopper at the store level. In the
era of large self-servicing stores such as hyper markets and
supermarkets, shopper marketing teams have found that point
of sale engagement as a crucial step for a successful product
sale. With this view, increasing amount out research has been
documented in field of marketing communication with product
packaging.
Modern day research, conclusively finds that the role of
product packaging is primarily to attract shoppers and then
communicate with them in a manner that results in sale.
Nonetheless,even today there is no concrete finding that would

5. ISEN 630 FALL 2015 Page 5 of 5
define the most ideal product packaging guidelines which
would guarantee a sale. The phenomenon of context is a great
challenge that causes various findings to differ or even
contradict. Context, here, is defined as a product category or a
demographic region where the product is on sale. While it is
now widely accepted that a product package is expected to
communicate and interact with a shopper at a psychological
level and develop an emotional attachment towards itself, there
is no clear general finding as to what role each attribute of a
product package plays in this process. This is due to wide
variation in product categories and targeted consumer
demography. These roles become even more prominent in
product categories and brands that a shopper is unfamiliar with.
This is because packaging attributes such as color, imagery,
strength of material, shape all communicate to the consumer
various qualitative aspects such as goodness, nutrition, taste,
quality, utility etc. of the product itself.
Across the modern day marketing community, it is widely
believed that development of a generalized packaging theory is
difficult in the near future. With this view, it is evident that at
present marketers will have to rely on researchers to undertake
surveying of psychological and emotional capabilities of
packaging attributes in each independent product category
across all packaging attributes.In future, with the growth in our
understanding of human psychology in scenarios of choice
decision making and development of scientific methods for
measurement of emotional response, marketing scientists
should be able to overcome the hindrance of context if not
completely, at least to a considerable extent.
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