3. Packaging and consumer understanding, trust, reassurance and confidence

Along with the importance in communicating with consumers at the point of purchase, packaging also plays a longer term role through continuing to build brand values during the extended usage of the product, which can help build brand equity and loyalty. These longer-term benefits are in contrast to other forms of marketing communication, like advertising exposure, which tend to be relatively brief.

Branding, as the creation of names, symbols, characters and slogans, helps identify a product and creates unique positive associations which differentiate it from the competition and in the process creates additional value in the consumer’s mind. For example, in the food industry and in the absence of advertising, consumers acquire expectations about the taste, healthiness, and social connotation associated with a particular food and its ingredients through branding, nutrition information, and/or health claims. Packaging becomes more critical where the product life is longer and its functional roles (for example, storing, preserving and hygiene) take on added importance. This can affect consumers’ trust and confidence on the basis of after-purchase usage. For instance, water might be perceived to taste better when it is poured from a firm bottle than from a flimsy bottle.

Indeed, the shape, material, and style of packaging when combined with marketing dress such as logos and recognisable colours and graphics can have a deep and lasting impact on consumers. This is especially so when consumption of the product takes place over a prolonged period, where frequent visits to the shelf or cupboard serves as a reminder. For a number of products, the packaging takes on branding importance in its own right to the extent of becoming synonymous with the brand, e.g. distinctively designed perfume bottles or iconic package shapes like the Coca-Cola glass bottle.

The distinctiveness and familiarity of packaging supports consumers’ understanding, trust and reassurance to provide confidence when making purchase decisions. Knowing what the brand stands for, that it is consistent and that it is easily recognisable helps the consumer make swift, informed purchase decisions. This provides producers with a powerful incentive to invest in creating distinctive packaging to support their brands [9].

Unfortunately, though, it may equally provide other producers an incentive to free ride on these packaging investments of successful brands to avoid the difficulty of coming up with their own distinctive packaging. As a consequence these may result in the development of parasitic copycat packaging that deliberately look like familiar and trusted brands through intentionally using similar packaging. This copycat packaging, though, can mislead consumers into mistaking copycat products for the real brands by drawing false associations that they are made by the same producer, are equivalent or identical in quality terms, and/or are seen as the same item when consumers do not take time to examine the packages carefully to spot (often subtle) differences in the design and labelling. The result is that the makers of copycat products do not just free ride on investments of brand producers, but they also undermine these brands and potentially harm the trust that consumers place in them when consumers are confused or misled.