Effect of Metal Can Labels on Consumer Attention through Eye Tracking Methodology

In today’s market there are a growing number of packaged goods on the shelves that consumers have to sift through in order to make purchasing decision. To stand out from the competition, companies often times change a product’s packaging to revolutionize the product or add important information to the package. Changing the package design can be risky for repeated customers because they become conditioned to the old package design. A private canning company worked with our researchers to conduct an eye tracking study in CUshop™ at PackExpo (tradeshow) 2014 in Chicago, Il to examine the effect of newly added labels on canned creole. Through a collaborative study at this trade show, quantitative and qualitative data was collected on three different canned creole packaging. A total of 272 participants took place in this study to evaluate if adding “can facts” to the package label and litho printing the ends of the cans had an effect on consumer attention compared to the control can. Three eye tracking metrics were tested and statistical analysis yielded significant results for the can facts and litho ends compared to the control for the Total Fixation Duration (TFD) metric. Participants viewed the can fact cans and litho end cans significantly longer than the control. Survey findings found that participants preferred the litho ends 75% compared to the control and the can facts 53% compared to the control.