The Next Level

Combining Marketing and Research

By Jerry W. Thomas

Which is the new Pam package, and which is the old? Can you tell at first glance? The frequency of package design "updates" is increasing as competition for space on the shelf intensifies. Which one would fare better for customers who don't know the Pam brand?

The market is changing, and the time has come to redesign the package of that old established brand. This will revitalize the brand, the marketing manager supposes. Or, a new product with great promise emerges from the laboratory, and a new package must be created from scratch. In both of these instances, the process of developing a new package tends to be the same. The package design firm attempts to get the client (the brand manager, the new products manager, the marketing vice president, etc.) to lay out the vision for the new package.

In a perfect world, the client would have a clear vision and accurately communicate this vision (meaning marketing goals and packaging objectives) to the package designers. However, the manufacturer's vision is often clouded with confusion and omission, and the result is no direction or poor direction for the new package design work.

Recognizing the pitfalls

Regardless of the clarity of the manufacturer's vision, the package design firm goes off, ponders the vagaries of the universe, and creates 20 or 30 rough designs for the new package. Typically, these designs are screened by the marketing executives, and a few designs are chosen for further development. These finalists then go through another round of managerial reviews, and a new design is chosen, based on the "expert" judgment of the marketing staff.

The stage is now properly set for a marketing disaster, because poor package design is often a major cause of marketing failure.

If the marketing professionals had flawless judgment, marketing meltdowns could be avoided. Unfortunately, marketing departments are never smart enough to see the market, or the new package, through the eyes of the average consumer. The marketing staff knows too much and is blinded by that knowledge. The marketing staff is biased by the mythologies of their profession, industry, and company.

The marketing staff is rarely similar to, or representative of, the ultimate consumers of the product (the marketing professionals tend to be much better educated and much higher in income than their customers). Also, marketing folks are often shielded by the corporate bureaucracy from the realities of the messy, helter-skelter marketplace. Lastly, two or three marketing executives are too small a sample for their decisions to be statistically reliable.

Would the proper qualitative research encourage or discourage this Pom Tea brand extension bottle/glass design? How would you learn if the Pom brand is permanently wed to its iconic pomegranate juice shape?

So, marketing executives and their judgments cannot be trusted. Can we turn to research for assistance, or is the research itself flawed?

Marketing research is not perfect. It has its biases and its blindness. Research tends to favor the status quo. It's an inherent bias in virtually all marketing research. This tends to mean that an existing package, the benchmark, will almost always outscore a new package design. This bias must be understood and taken into account in interpreting the results of packaging tests.

There are many other research pitfalls (sampling problems, study design issues, questionnaire problems, analytical problems, etc.) that can invalidate the research. That's why you must rely on researchers with some gray hair, wrinkles, and humility to help oversee the research design and the interpretation of the research results. Despite its limitations, research improves the odds of success, compared to three or four executives sitting around a conference table.

Developing the research keys

What are the keys to using research to develop and evaluate package designs? Let's go back to the very beginning of the process, the prepackage design phase. The research should ideally begin at the beginning. Good qualitative research can be invaluable in helping marketing executives set the correct goals and objectives for the new package design. This qualitative research should include an ethnographic component, the observation of shoppers in a natural retail environment, and perhaps in a usage environment. How do consumers shop the category? How much time do they spend in front of the display? How many packages do they pick up? How many shoppers read the details on the label? How many packages of what sizes are purchased? How does the consumer interact with the package in the home before, during, and after usage?

After observations of actual shopping and usage behavior, in-depth interviews should be the next step. What are the primary motivations and perceptions that drive brand choice? Are respondents aware of brand names, or do they buy based on the color and design of the package? Are they aware of advertising in the category, and are they aware of advertising for specific brands in the category? Can they remember and describe the existing packages in the category? What do they remember, or think they remember, about these packages? Do they buy one brand only, or shop around and buy different brands from week to week? How frequently do they buy the category and the brand? How frequently do they interact with the package once it arrives in the home?

A breakfast cereal package, for example, might sit on the breakfast table every morning for a week before the package is discarded. A frozen food package, on the other hand, may only be seen once when it is pulled from the freezer and opened. What are the advantages and disadvantages of the packaging and graphic designs for each of the major brands in the category? All of these little details, once fully understood, can help the marketing professionals set clear and relevant goals for the new package design. Helping to define and set the correct goals at the outset of the design process is perhaps the single most important contribution of research. Once the design goals are set, the package designers are ready to go to work.

The Gatorade brand is experimenting with the flexibility of its iconic lightning bolt. Could online sampling research reveal the shortcomings of this design strategy? Or is this a case of marketing ruling the roost?

As noted, the designers will typically create a large number of rough designs (anywhere from 10 to 30 or more early-stage designs). The goal of research at this point is to identify the better designs and screen out the "dogs." Typically, this screening is done via online surveys. A sample of 200 to 300 target audience consumers is shown all of the rough designs (that is, each respondent sees every one of the designs in randomized order), and answers several questions about each design, such as:

1. Attention value
2. Purchase interest, based solely on the package design
3. Uniqueness or dissimilarity to competitive packages
4. Fit to or compatibility with the brand

The results of these questions are combined into a scoring model so that all of the package designs can be ranked from best to worst. The output of the model is the identification of the four or five "better" designs.

One note to make is that there is an alternative approach at this early stage. It is often desirable to create a number of rough package designs with the elements systematically varied according to a choice-modeling experimental design. In this approach, each respondent sees a test package in a competitive context, and chooses the package she would buy. Different respondents see different sets of package designs, with different elements, illustrations, and messages.

Then, the statisticians crunch all of the numbers and mathematically infer the importance of the various variables and measure the relationships among the variables. Based on this enhanced understanding of the utility or importance of different variables that make up the package design, a small number of improved package designs can be created for the final stages of testing.

Note: This article is Part 1 of a two-part article. The second part will appear in the April issue of Package Design Magazine. Full archives are available online at www.packagedesignmag.com. Next Issue: "Fine-tuning the design" and "Dangers for established brands."

Jerry W. Thomas is president and chief executive officer of Decision Analyst, a major international marketing research and marketing consulting firm. He can be reached at jthomas@decisionanalyst.com, 800-262-5974, or www.decisionanalyst.com.