The Design Factors of Cosmetic Packaging Textures for Conveying Feelings

There have been a lot of studies on the relationship between visual appearances of packaging—such as color, font, and illustration—and consumers’ feelings, but very few focused on touch sensation. Well-designed touch texture can attract consumers to cosmetic products and can be considered as a rarely-explored way of sensory marketing. The objectives of this study was to seek for design factors (design elements that can be associated with feeling words). Thirty-six different 3-D texture models were constructed. Their designs were produced from established 2-D visual design elements. Those models were tested by a group of participants to see whether they could clearly convey different feelings. Only 6 models were deemed valid in this sense. These 6 models were then sought for distinctive design factors. The 5 design factors that were obtained were the following- 1) structure of lines, 2) distance between lines, 3) small and large empty spaces, 4) line uniformity, and 5) number of lines. These design factors were able to elicit 16 feeling words- 1. Busy, 2. Tense, 3. Strong, 4. Confident, 5. Manful, 6. Delicate, 7. Friendly, 8. Gentle, 9. Sensitive, 10. Enjoyable, 11. Independent, 12. Natural, 13. Simple, 14. Comfortable, 15. Easy, and 16. Flexible. These design factors can be directly used by designers for constructing textured surface components of packages or products that can affect consumers’ feelings by touch.