Competition in the food industry is fierce and the range of products available in stores far exceeds consumers' actual needs. In every product category, shoppers are faced with shelves full of different alternatives. When launching a new product, companies need to know their customers well, develop a precise value proposition and communicate it convincingly.

To determine consumer preferences, manufacturers generally rely on questionnaires and interviews. The weakness of these methods, however, is that people cannot always accurately explain why they chose one product over another in a store. In addition, they may not reveal their true motives in every situation.

As a result, researchers are turning to psychological measurement methods that make it possible to observe people's reactions even when they cannot put them into words themselves. Neuromarketing specialists, for example, track eye movements, analyze facial expressions and conduct other psychophysiological measurements. These methods are intended to provide a better understanding of what people actually notice, what emotions a product evokes and what ultimately drives their choices. The goal is to reduce the subjectivity associated with respondents' self-assessments and make the results as objective as possible.

"Essentially, we can learn a little about aspects of people's preferences and attention that they themselves are unable to describe," explained Kristian Pentus, the author of the dissertation.

Three steps to a purchase decision

To address the problem, Pentus developed a three-part research framework that treats purchasing decisions as a single, integrated process. First, eye-tracking is used to determine whether a person notices a product on the shelf at all. Next, software analyzes facial muscle movements to identify the emotions evoked by the packaging. In the third stage, conjoint analysis is used to examine which product characteristics — such as color, design or information on the packaging — have the greatest influence on a person's rational choice.

When assessed separately, these components can give a misleading picture of a product's chances of success. For example, purple meat packaging might outperform others in an eye-tracking experiment because it immediately stands out on the shelf. But visibility alone is not enough: if the unusual color does not evoke a positive feeling in the shopper or conflicts with expectations of what meat packaging should look like, the product may still not be chosen.

The opposite problem arises when consumers like the packaging, but it fails to capture their attention on the shelf. Pentus gave the example of a product featuring a smiling grandmother on the package: in a laboratory setting, it may evoke warm and positive emotions, yet go unnoticed among hundreds of other products in a store. In that case, an appealing design is of limited value because consumers may never even reach the product.

The impact of packaging also varies at different stages of the purchasing journey. When looking at a shelf from a distance, shoppers are primarily drawn to large design elements and colors that help them quickly locate a product. Once they begin comparing different options, however, details such as flavor and ingredients become more important.

That is why evaluating packaging based on a single metric is not enough. Instead, companies need to consider visibility, emotional impact and the product characteristics that actually guide consumers' choices together. "This provides a much more diverse and comprehensive picture of the aspects in which a product succeeds and those in which it does not," Pentus explained.

Computer screens can mislead scientists

In addition to developing the new research framework, Kristian Pentus' work highlighted a problem with laboratory experiments in which packaging is shown to participants on a computer screen. In such situations, people do not look at shelves the same way they do in a store. Instead, their gaze tends to focus on the center of the screen because the monitor's edges act as a visual frame. As a result, products placed in the middle of an image gain an artificial advantage in experiments and may appear easier to notice than they would be on an actual store shelf.

This center-focus effect does not occur in stores where attention is guided by other factors, such as a product's height on the shelf, the color and size of its packaging and the competing products surrounding it. That means results from experiments conducted on computer screens cannot be directly transferred to real shopping environments. Laboratory studies need to be designed in ways that reflect as accurately as possible how people actually move through aisles and notice products on shelves.

As an illustrative example, Pentus recalled an ice cream whose manufacturer had designed eye-catching, colorful packaging for different flavors. The approach worked extremely well in eye-tracking experiments because the products stood out clearly on the shelf. At the same time, however, the design omitted an important cue for consumers: the product name did not specify the flavor and the packaging lacked visual hints such as strawberries or vanilla beans. Since people buying ice cream are often looking for a particular flavor rather than a brand, the design could have ended up confusing shoppers in stores. The products made it to market, but the packaging design did not.

According to Pentus, packaging research often focuses primarily on price and brand because these factors are easy to evaluate separately in experiments. Yet consumers' experiences may also be influenced by much less studied characteristics, such as packaging material, color and how the package feels in the hand. For example, the same juice may seem sweeter or more sour depending on the color of its packaging, even though the drink itself is identical. "The taste doesn't change, but your perception does," the researcher added.

The brain's energy saving mode and secret labs

People make a large share of their purchasing decisions in stores quickly and out of habit. If shoppers carefully weighed the ingredients of every yogurt, juice or loaf of bread, a trip to the grocery store would take hours. To simplify these choices, the brain relies on heuristics — mental shortcuts or rules of thumb. Familiar products end up in the shopping cart almost automatically, while most alternatives are never seriously considered.

For a new product, breaking through these habits is difficult. Its packaging first needs to stand out on the shelf and then evoke enough emotion for consumers to be willing to stray from their usual choices. According to Kristian Pentus, large international corporations have invested enormous sums in studying consumer behavior and have built specialized neuromarketing laboratories for that purpose.

As an example, he pointed to a classified underground research center in Central Europe where entire shopping centers have been recreated in simulated environments. Researchers there track which products capture people's attention, which packages hold their gaze and what emotions different design solutions evoke.

Neuromarketing, however, does not provide companies with a magical button that can force people to choose a particular product. "There really is no buy button," the researcher emphasized. Packaging can attract attention and influence emotions, but the final decision depends on the interaction of many different factors.

According to Pentus, neuromarketing is not merely a tool for increasing sales of products that may be harmful to consumers. The same methods can also be used to encourage healthier choices, for example by making useful information on packaging easier to notice and understand. In his view, that potential remains largely untapped. "It's like a knife. You can use a knife to spread butter and slice bread, but you can also use it to stab someone," he said.

Consumers can also consciously reduce the influence of appealing packaging while shopping. Pentus recommends avoiding trips to the store on an empty stomach and taking some time once a month to review one's usual purchasing habits. It helps to think in advance about what matters most when filling a shopping cart. There is no need to reanalyze every purchase on every shopping trip. If people gradually make their habits more deliberate, their everyday choices will improve over time as well.

"If you improve your food basket one element at a time like that, it will soon become much healthier," Pentus said.

Kristian Pentus defended his doctoral dissertation, "A conjoint-enriched neuromarketing research framework for package design research," at the University of Tartu on May 29. His supervisors were Andres Kuusik and Andero Uusberg. The opponents were Jesper Orla Clement of Copenhagen Business School and Timothy Paul Holmes of the University of London.

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