MMR Research Worldwide (MMR)—a leading research partner for food, drink and personal and household care companies—explained how early consumer packaging research can save time and money at the Packaging and Converting Excellence (PACE) Forum (2012). Visitors to the conference for business owners and packaging professionals in Miami also met MMR's experts to discuss all aspects of packaging market research, including the company's proprietary sensory and emotion-based techniques.
MMR's presentation "Packaging: From necessity to advantage," used specific examples to illustrate the importance of packaging in the process of forming customers' impressions of brands. Stergios Bititsios, MMR associate director, explained how consumer insight must be fed into every stage of the packaging innovation process if customers' expectations of the product and brand are to be met. He stressed the importance of extending research methods to assess consumer "conceptualisations" (the meaning people attach to packaging's multiple attributes) of all aspects of packaging, not just the design.
"Viewing packaging as a consumer experience in research recognises it as one of the most important ways to influence consumer choice and enhance the consumption experience. We believe packaging should be given the same in-depth market research focus as the product, when, in fact, it is often treated as the poorer relation," Bititsios says. "It was wonderful to demonstrate at the PACE forum how investing in research of this kind can yield significant savings for companies."
Bititsios is a leading global packaging research expert for the food, drink and household and personal care industries. Based out of MMR's UK headquarters, he has an MPhil in Affective Engineering and is a specialist in design-led consumer research methods, having worked with leading global FMCG players and packaging innovators such as Reckitt Benckiser, GSK and Kraft.
Source: MMR Research Worldwide
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