Changing your pack design and structure has been shown to significantly increase sales by up to 30%, worth the same as spending £1.8m in advertising every year.
The latest advances in pack testing enable us to predict within +/-9% accuracy the sales your new packaging will create.
Packaging is often the forgotten part of the NPD mix, rarely tested, or just bolted on to the end of a consumer test.
Yet the latest research shows how important packaging is in driving sales. It’s your on-shelf brand awareness tool and sales generator and as such, it has to compete with 40,000 other products for space in the consumers’ basket.
The Oxford Research Agency has been researching packaging for many years, with pack structure, design and shelf standout included in every study. With new research innovations coming on-stream, we are leading the way in developing new packaging research tools for the global market.
Many clients look for a sales boost from a redesign of their packaging. Below we outline our Guiding Principles of packaging design:-
- Has your pack design changed in the last 2 years?
Using packaging to maintain and evolve customer engagement has developed into a major part of the sales process. If you have not changed your packaging in the last 2 years, you could be several steps behind your competitors.
Remember, its not about whether consumers like your current pack in isolation, it is all about how it performs at the point of contact with consumers – the supermarket shelf, in-amongst the competitive set.
After two years, most of the category will have been updated. Take another look at your packaging – it might be holding you back.
- Evolution, not revolution
Revolution = increased risk of losing sales. If you need to change your pack considerably, allow it to evolve and take consumers with you.
Revolution is possible, particularly through new pack structures, but you must test it with consumers. Too many brands have seen 50%+ fall sales from a revolution in design – research can guide you to make a successful design change.
- There are no winners in the beauty parade
Take care in how you test your new designs. It’s not important to test whether your new design is significantly more liked than your current design in a head-to-head test, after all, they will never be seen together on the shelf.
Compare the new pack to the category it will feature in – this is the true competitive set and it will determine your future success.
- Measure Real Standout and Real Speed to Find
The latest techniques now allow for Real Standout and Real Speed of Find to be measured, in a totally unbiased and unprompted route. We have incorporated this into our volumetric systems to identify the impact of Real Standout on your volumes – a world first!
Research must replicate the real world as closely as possible to have any validity. Artificial timed games in research are just that – timed games.
There are plenty of brand managers who can tell you that timed standout measures superficial attractiveness and not sales. The Oxford Research Agency has case studies of packs which have been launched on this one diagnostic and seen sales fall by 80% - it’s a strong warning about collecting and using the wrong measures in research.
- Reduce Carbon, Increase Sales
Reducing your carbon footprint will lead at some stage to a re-evaluation of your packaging structure and design. For instance, can you take out pack weight to reduce pack costs and transportation costs?
New structures must be tested by consumers, both on-shelf and in-home. Additionally, they must be branded – it is of little use to test a structure without branding as it will have little life or meaning for the consumer.
- Don’t forget the Brand!
The pack is your brand ambassador on-shelf. The packaging must support the proposition, so above all, brand equity must be measured, identified and improved if you are to take your sales forward.
- Create love at first sight
Packaging should inspire and excite the consumer. Test whether the new pack fits your brand and generates a positive feeling about the product. The best packs have character and emotional properties which positively impact on sales and differentiate them from the category.
- Your pack is everyday advertising
No brand owner can afford to consistently advertise. However, your packaging on-shelf allows you to communicate with your consumers every time they shop.
Good packaging design is not just about generating sales. The design needs to fit and communicate the brand’s values and raise expectations about the product. Your packaging is a vital piece of everyday communication and you must treat it as sensitively as you would advertising and other forms of communication.
- Any pack can be bright pink – there is no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow
Chasing standout is the latest trend. Aisles are becoming brightly lit with packs of every colour screaming from the shelves. Just 10 years ago the Cheese fixture used to be filled with yellow blocks of Cheese, yet now we have Pink, Red, Black, Blue, Brown and every other colour of pack on-shelf.
Beware of this strategy - colour is difficult to ‘own’, and is simple for another branded manufacturer or retailer to copy. Focus on re-enforcing the brand equity and avoid chasing the rainbow – there is no pot of gold at the end of it!
- Remember, consumers are not pack designers
Consumers are not equipped to be packaging designers, much in the same way as they are unable to tell you how to position your brand, design your logo or direct your advertising.
Research has to be designed carefully to measure consumers’ appeal of the design, and extract the information to help you evolve your design. Take care with research which claims it can use consumers to design your pack – they are not equipped to do this.
The latest packaging research techniques are fully integrated with volumetrics to enable you test multiple designs and identify the volume this will deliver.
Using our volumetric database we can identify with an accuracy of +/-9% the sales of your new brand with its new packaging. We are the first Research Agency in the world to provide you with standout, brand equity and character diagnostics that link to real sales.
To find out more, contact Chris Sinclair (chris.sinclair@tora.co.uk) or call +44 1865 728272
