The Marriage Of Graphic Design & Research – Experimentally Designed Packages Offer New Vistas & Opportunities

For many fast moving consumer goods the package is the first experience a consumer has with the product. As part of MJI’s services, we apply advanced conjoint (Green & Srinivasan, 1978) methods to help our clients determine best packaging for their products. In some of our work, we help clients develop the most visually appealing package (container) for their product. In other studies, we help our clients develop the most appealing graphics to decorate the their packages. The work we do owes much to a psychophysical heritage (e.g. Moskowitz, 1981) – systematic stimulus manipulation is coupled with a simple respondent-rating task. Models relating visual appeal to packaging options are developed. We will describe case studies, which demonstrate two applications of our approach: 1) Package-design studies in which the goal is to maximizing the appeal of the physical container. In these studies, basic physical parameters such as package shape, dimensions, the surface material, opening and closing mechanisms are varied. Respondents are exposed to photo-realistic renderings of the packages. From these studies, our clients understand the impact of each packaging option on consume