Have you thought about creating a new product to sell to the world? As a business person, there’s no greater joy than bringing a product into the world. But to get it to sell, you must consider your packaging.
How do you get your packaging right? By conducting high-quality packaging testing.
Are you testing new packaging concepts and designs? Then high-quality research and actionable insights are your starting point. Think of the text itself as your own design project and refer to how you can be successful with it.
Here’s everything you need to know about packaging testing and how you can get it right.
Eye-Tracking Methods
Part of package design testing is the eye-tracking method. This enables you to understand how consumers feel about the packaging.
If possible, provide those involved in the investigation with digital images of the new concept or package. This way, they have clues as to how the test should be designed and conducted during the investigation.
Experienced staff who know the local conditions during the research can help you. They can consider elements of the consumer experience you may not have thought of.
Although not trained in design, a technician understands the importance of organizing tests. They can eliminate prejudice by introducing the test to a real shop. They won’t game the system with bogus customers or fake businesses.
Avoid Over-Sharing
A big mistake we can make as researchers is to give buyers more information than they need before they take part in a research study.
When developing a package test method using eye-tracking, it is of course important to ensure that you recruit the desired shopper for a certain category.
Remember that food is very important to consumers and their responses regarding food packaging might be influenced by their own food tastes. Try to find people who would eat your product ordinarily rather than those who would usually skip past it.
Want to know how to test packaging? In the instructions to buyers, make sure you ask them to shop within the category in which they are located.
Allow eye-tracking devices to record your shopping experience at every step so they can do the job themselves.
Take notes and save questions posted after the interview. Moderators should not talk to the buyer in any way during their test shop in case they influence them.
Forced Exposures
Forced exposure exposes the buyer to the packaging on the shop floor, and invites them to examine it as if they were considering whether to buy it off the shelf. It then asks them to stop to test the concept of the packaging.
This contributes significantly to understanding how the packaging design behaves in terms of attention. By analyzing this portion of the data from eye-tracking, researchers can figure out what the most important parts of a packaging design are.
Remember, eye-tracking videos are available for review and can be used as a conversation tool to understand the purchasing behavior in terms of design.
The compulsory exposure part of the pack tests enables us to understand which elements of the design attract and hold the attention of the purchaser while they examine the package.
Write a Script
To ensure that test conditions remain consistent, it is ideal to have a script that the interviewer can follow when giving the respondents purchase instructions during the package test.
After reviewing the video, respondents have the opportunity to ask the buyer what they thought when they bought and examined the package, and what they liked or disliked.
Valuable information can come from discussions. This includes input such as which elements of the package people liked or disliked, how the package differs from what they noticed, and what they felt about the brand and product based on the package.
Flexibility
Flexibility in guidance is key to consumer performance, so providing additional explanations when needed enables greater confidence in research results.
Many of your tests should make use of this relationship. When you test a new market product concept or package, make sure you take full advantage of expensive tests in stores and mock stores.
When testing an eye-tracking component, make sure that suppliers understand key areas of interest for testing, including the most important competitive product elements and packages.
Try not to do too much at once. It is important to get data from everything when you engage in packaging testing, but try not to exaggerate it.
Test Variables
When introducing several variables into a research study, it can be difficult to determine the cause. It can also be hard to notice the variance in the analysis. Testing different planograms on the shelf and trying to test a new product packaging can complicate the analysis.
It could be a vertical brand block to improve product visibility or a new concept in packaging. It could be the location of the top shelf or adding shelf signs to influence how shoppers interact with the product.
It’s possible to test more than one variable (e.g. eye-tracking or packet testing). But it’s important to understand that these tests allow the interviewer to answer questions by respondents afterward.
Many questions today relate to the sustainability of packaging. Consumers can often tell what packages are good for the environment.
Before you arrive on-site to package and test packages, make sure that the supplier has proper documentation. This should include who is testing the packages and what they are looking for.
Quality cameras and field technicians are your best friends. The information received by the analysis team on the ground on the packages tested will greatly benefit the outcome.
Packaging Is Key to Selling Great Products
Package testing is key to creating a stand-out product in a competitive retail environment.
When conducting packaging tests such as eye-tracking, remember to put lots of thought into designing test methodology. This way, the research team can get great results to interpret.
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