4. The impact of packaging at the point of sale and post-sale influence of packaging

4.1. Packaging at a point of sale

Packaging’s dual role is what makes it a truly unique marketing tool. Packaging is not merely a passing or transitory form of communication. Rather it stays with the consumer after purchase and thereby plays a crucial role not only at the point of sale but also after the actual purchase of the product (reminding the consumer of the purchase and the identity of the product). However, the point of sale, or “the first moment of truth”, is about gaining customers interest and communicating the benefits of the product attributes.

The importance of making an impact at the point of sale cannot be underestimated. With the move to self-service retail formats, packaging increases its key characteristic as the “salesman on the shelf” at the point of sale in respect of calling out from the shelf and informing the consumer of the product’s nature and attributes. This is particularly important in the context of grocery shopping, where the consumer might visit a supermarket containing 25,000 items but might only seek to fill a shopping basket with around 40 items. This calls for consumers to sift through a vast amount of products to choose what they want – and not surprisingly they end up ignoring most of what they pass.

Crucially, at the point of purchase, packaging has to communicate information about the product to customers so they know what they are buying (or deciding what not to buy). If the customer decides to buy the product, the packaging must facilitate usage by providing the right information and user-friendly functions. Packaging must provide customers with the right cues – both at point of purchase and during usage. At the point of purchase, packaging serves a number of key functions, namely:

• Standing out in the crowd – reaching out to the consumer to get noticed. Creating a powerful shelf presence so that the brand stands out from the crowd and is actually noticed is the first and most vital step for any product on a shelf.

• Communicating marketing information, giving reasons to buy

• Stimulating or creating brand impressions

• Providing various brand cues: Value, Quality and Safety

Extrinsic cues (such as price, brand name and the package, which are not part of the physical product) work together to influence the purchase decision. The salience of intrinsic attributes at the point of purchase depends on whether they can be sensed and evaluated at that time. In particular, extrinsic cues may serve as quality indicators when the consumer is operating without adequate information about intrinsic quality attributes.

The packaging elements can have a strong or weak influence on consumers purchase decisions depending on the consumer’s involvement level, time pressure or individual characteristics. In general, consumer attention tends to be driven by in-store factors and extrinsic cues, as consumers have neither the desire nor the need to comprehensively investigate and assess all the offerings available to them. In a setting like a supermarket, the wide choice of products and the varied range available to consumers at the point of sale oblige producers to work harder to achieve effective differentiation and appear distinct. This explains why traditional mass media communication might be redirected to point of sale promotions and communication.

In a standard supermarket, a typical shopper might pass around 300 products per minute. This translates into less than one-tenth of a second for a single product to gain the attention of the customer and spark a purchase. Therefore, packaging design to grab attention is critically important. The package must perform many of the sales tasks for making an overall favourable and immediate impression. Non-verbal packaging elements are extremely vivid stimuli compared to words and also are quicker and easier for consumers to process in a supermarket or other self-service retail setting. In this regard, colour (as a non-verbal element) often stands out as the key differentiator. Here, going against the norm can help. For instance, Pepsi has based its packaging strategy around the colour blue, even though red is generally associated with soft drinks (and indeed is the colour used by its great rival Coca-Cola). Thus, whether or not there is a general colour association, a product could choose to both gain attention and differentiate itself by using a distinctive visual (non-verbal) packaging strategy.

It is clear that packaging faces an immensely complex task. Many products are screaming for attention, different consumers have different informational needs (none have any time), information can be complex, and packaging must fulfil its informational role in seconds. Memorable and distinctive packaging is something that all leading brand producers strive to achieve and maintain. Staying ahead of the pack of “me-too” copies and imitations is the ultimate design challenge. It is a remarkable feature of the FMCG sector that it supports such a wide range and variety of products with distinctive packaging that allows, even in a supermarket setting of 25,000 items, so many products to stand out as truly distinct.