Organic Food Package Design Management in SMEs: A Conjoint Analysis Approach

Recently, the organic food market in many places of the world has grown at a soaring rate. With a flood of similar products with identical features available in today’s marketplace, package design becomes one of the important factors for marketing managers in their decision making. Against this backdrop, corporations tend to invest large amounts of money into packaging to influence consumer’s intention to buy. However, it is not the case for SMEs, since their financial resources are more than often limited. In this study, we identified major elements of packaging and examined their effectiveness to derive managerial guidelines for SMEs to efficiently design organic food packages. We conducted two different user tests, and applied conjoint analysis to evaluate the relative importance weights of four visual elements. Subjects were influenced by visual stimuli equally regardless of purchasing experience. We showed that “typography” played the most influential role by appealing to consumers’ eco-sensibilities and affecting their purchasing decisions. The study could be extended to various products as well as consumer groups, so that designers find an appropriate design strategy to communicate with consumers more properly