The Consumer Neuroscience of Packaging

Given the explosion of interest in the fields of multisensory packaging design and consumer neuroscience/neuromarketing in recent years, it is natural to wonder what relevance the latter approaches have as far as the optimization of the former is concerned. In this review, we chart the use of neuroimaging techniques such as electroencephalography and functional magnetic resonance imaging by those wishing to understand the neural response of consumers to various examples of multisensory product packaging. The hope is that such insights might one day help businesses to better predict the performance of product packaging, given specific strategic objectives. To date, much of the research has focused simply on determining the network of brain areas that are involved in processing visual images of product packaging. Intriguingly, though, the latest findings now suggest that composite brain measures seen in response to product communication may, under certain conditions at least, be used to predict a product’s sales success in the marketplace. We highlight the key challenges associated with using neuroimaging techniques for packaging research and stress the limitations (such as the challenges associated with assessing the influence of tactile and olfactory attributes of the packaging, as well as collecting repeated measures when consumers interact with the product in its packaging). We end by reviewing the latest insights that have emerged from the use of neuroscience-inspired (consumer neuroscience) techniques (including so-called implicit tests, such as the Implicit Association Test, and eye-tracking), that have managed to overcome some of the limitations associated with neuroimaging.