Packaging Psychology: Why Shoppers Pick One Box Over Another
Four studies test shape, pictures, windows and layout on the pack. A fifth source, a book on brand growth, explains why the winning cues should then stay the same.
Answer to the question
What Does a Branding and Packaging Design Agency Do?
A branding and packaging design agency shapes how a product looks and signals on the shelf. Research shows shoppers use container height as a shortcut for volume, give more attention to pack pictures on brands they know less well, and process symmetric fronts more easily. The agency tests those cues and keeps the winners consistent.
Key takeaways
- Priya Raghubir and Aradhna Krishna reported in 1999, across seven experiments, that container height is a main cue people use as a shortcut when judging volume, and that shape also moved preference, choice and satisfaction after consumption.
- Robert Underwood and colleagues found in 2001 that package pictures increased attention to the brand in a virtual reality simulation, but only for brands shoppers knew less well and in categories with relatively high experiential benefits.
- In a 2020 eye-movement study, Xueer Ma and colleagues found that windows drew more attention than none, while a transparent and a graphic window of the same size did not differ significantly.
- In 2018, with 104 participants, Arnaud Bigoin-Gagnan and Sophie Lacoste-Badie found that a mirror-symmetric front lowered perceived visual complexity and had a positive influence on attractiveness and purchase intention.
- Byron Sharp's How Brands Grow supplies the discipline: identifying cues work only if they stay the same, so a brief should list what is fixed and what is free to change.
A branding and packaging design agency handles cues that a shopper takes in before reading a word on the pack. Proportion, pictures, windows and layout each say something at a glance, and each has been tested on its own. None of the tests is a rule for every pack. Each one names a cue worth putting in front of shoppers in a trial, which is how a good brief treats it.
Four pack cues and what each does to shoppers
Priya Raghubir and Aradhna Krishna asked whether the eye and the stomach agree about volume. Their seven experiments, reported in the Journal of Marketing Research, found that container height is a main cue people use as a shortcut when forming perceived volume, the impression of how much a container holds, and that shape also moved preference, choice and satisfaction after consumption. The authors drew out consequences for package design, communication and pricing.
A taller carton and a squatter one therefore send different size signals before the label is read, which means a branding and packaging design agency is making a statement about quantity whenever it settles on proportions. How size interacts with unit price is covered in Why the Big Box Is Not the Cheap One.
A picture of the product is the most direct thing a pack can add to its name. Robert Underwood and colleagues built a virtual reality shopping simulation and found that package imagery in the form of product pictures increased attention to the brand. The effect was conditional. It appeared for brands that shoppers knew less well, private-label lines among them, and in categories that offer relatively high experiential benefits. The authors suggested that pictures may help such brands enter consideration sets.
The pattern points two ways: a familiar brand has less to gain from a picture than a newcomer does, and a category bought mainly for function has less to gain than one bought for the experience. A brief to a branding and packaging design agency should say which case applies.
A transparent window raises a related question about package imagery: does letting the shopper see the product do more than a printed picture of it? Windows drew more attention than a pack with none, and the size of the effect differed by product category. That came from eye movement records of college students who viewed nuts, preserved fruits and instant cereals on a computer screen, in work led by Xueer Ma. A transparent window and a graphic window of the same size did not differ significantly in attention. A brief can therefore ask for both versions to be compared, because the choice of material may matter less for attention than having a window at all.
Every added claim crowds the front of a pack, so layout becomes a question of order. A mirror-symmetric arrangement of the front-of-pack information around the vertical axis lowered perceived visual complexity, and lower complexity raised processing fluency, the ease with which a pack is taken in, although that path ran only indirectly. Front-of-pack symmetry also had a positive influence on how attractive people found the pack and on their purchase intention. The experiment, by Arnaud Bigoin-Gagnan and Sophie Lacoste-Badie, showed one hundred and four participants fast-moving consumer goods packs. The finding concerns how the information already on the front is arranged. Typeface has its own evidence in Do Hard-to-Read Fonts Help or Hurt.
The cues that make one recognisable box easy to find
Byron Sharp's How Brands Grow argues that perceived meaningful difference between rival brands is low, which leaves a brand the practical task of being recognised and brought to mind in a buying situation. Colours, shapes and other cues, which the book treats as distinctive assets, serve as identifiers for that purpose, and they work only if they stay the same from one pack to the next. The book builds the case from measures of perceived difference between brands.
A pack that changes its shape, picture and layout every season spends the recognition it built. Colour is the cue most often debated, and its evidence sits in Does Green Packaging Look Healthier and Why Black Packaging Looks Expensive. A branding and packaging design agency needs two lists from the client before it draws anything: what must stay fixed and what is free to change.
What to tell a branding and packaging design agency first
The brief belongs before the first sketch, because the cues interact. A window changes the layout, a picture changes where attention goes, and a new proportion can undo recognition the pack has already built. Writing the brief first also gives everyone the same list to judge the options against, which keeps the discussion on the shopper and off personal taste. Five items cover it.
| Brief item | What it settles |
|---|---|
| Cues the brand already owns | Which parts of the pack must not change |
| The front's single job | Whether a shopper who looks for a second learns size, contents or who the brand is |
| Familiarity of the brand | Whether a picture is likely to raise attention, since it did for less familiar brands |
| Information on the front | How much it carries, in what order, and whether a symmetric layout has been tried |
| How options are compared | Using shoppers rather than an internal vote |
An agency that mocks up each candidate beside the packs it will stand next to gives the client what the studies cannot supply, a view of the pack among its rivals. The number of shoppers who will see each version before the choice is made is worth asking for in writing.
Common questions
What does a branding and packaging design agency do?
It designs the identity of a brand and the pack that carries it, covering proportion, imagery, materials and layout, and tests the options with shoppers. The research on pack cues gives a branding and packaging design agency a list of choices worth testing, and the brand's own identity cues give it a list of things to keep fixed.
How does package shape change what shoppers think?
In seven experiments reported in 1999, container height was a main cue people used to judge volume, and shape also moved preference, choice and satisfaction after consumption.
Does a picture on the pack help a brand get noticed?
In a virtual reality simulation, package pictures increased attention to the brand, but only for brands shoppers knew less well and in categories with relatively high experiential benefits.
What drives the cost of a branding and packaging design agency?
Scope sets the fee: the number of products and pack formats, how many rounds of testing with shoppers are run, and how much print and material work is included. A good branding and packaging design agency states those drivers before it states a figure.
Sources
Sharp, B. How Brands Grow. Seed book; vault hub Books/How Brands Grow.
Raghubir, P., & Krishna, A. (1999). “Vital Dimensions in Volume Perception: Can the Eye Fool the Stomach?” Journal of Marketing Research, 36(3). doi:10.1177/002224379903600302 https://doi.org/10.1177/002224379903600302
Underwood, R. L., Klein, N. M., & Burke, R. R. (2001). “Packaging communication: attentional effects of product imagery.” Journal of Product & Brand Management, 10(7). doi:10.1108/10610420110410531 https://doi.org/10.1108/10610420110410531
Ma, X., Zhuang, X., & Ma, G. (2020). “Transparent Windows on Food Packaging Do Not Always Capture Attention and Increase Purchase Intention.” Frontiers in Psychology, 11, 593690. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2020.593690 https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.593690
Bigoin-Gagnan, A., & Lacoste-Badie, S. (2018). “Symmetry influences packaging aesthetic evaluation and purchase intention.” International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, 46(11/12). doi:10.1108/ijrdm-06-2017-0123 https://doi.org/10.1108/ijrdm-06-2017-0123