Stimulate your senses through packaging

In e-commerce, a box is first and foremost functional. Fill, seal, ship and done! Or is it? Packaging plays an increasingly important role in seducing consumers. Striking colours and powerful slogans are therefore complemented by elements that stimulate the senses. Optimise your customer experience and find out what the creative packaging of the future will look like in this article.

Millennials want a new form of packaging

‘Sensory packaging’ is a type of packaging designed to create a special buying experience for e-commerce customers when they receive and open their package. This fully capitalises on the five senses.

In itself, this is nothing new. Since time immemorial, traditional commerce through physical shops has been doing everything it can to make customers feel comfortable and captivated at the same time. Lighting, decoration, background music, smells… it all plays a role. That shopping experience is what e-commerce companies want to bring to their customers – and what better way to do it than through packaging?

There is no doubt that packaging with special effects attracts more attention, increases the value of the product and ultimately boosts sales. Think especially of effects you can see and feel, but also effects that act on the sense of smell, taste and hearing. By acting on the senses, you stimulate your customer’s curiosity and add a playful element to your product.

The sense of senses: see, feel, smell, hear and touch your packaging

► 1. See

Our journey through the senses starts with our eyes. The first thing a customer sees when they receive their package is the outer packaging. Here, make sure that a customer can quickly identify your brand by its colours, messages and logos. Brand consultant Karsten Kilian also explains that “the message on a package sticks better. The closer the product and the message are together, the greater the effect of advertising will be.”

Researchers at Boston College in the US have shown that you can easily manipulate a customer with colour saturation.¹ Packaging with striking, bright colours makes us believe the product is bigger. Do you sell biscuits? Then put brightly coloured packaging around them from now on and your customers are more likely to think they are bigger. However, don’t bombard your customer with a grand visual spectacle. “Less is more” you often hear. And that applies here too.

► 2. Feel

When we take packaging into our hands, first and foremost the type of cardboard plays a big role. Sturdy cardboard with a double or triple layer comes across better quality and ensures a higher brand value. It is equally important that your packaging looks and feels true to life. This can be done, for instance, by working with embossing or customised prints. Certain varnishes or tissue paper create a velvety and soft feel.

Studies have shown that the shape of product packaging has an impact on the perception of a product. “For example, angular packaging and logos are associated by consumers with strong brands, exude energy and reflect a strong ‘foundation’. In turn, rounder shapes are associated with friendliness, softness and harmony.” ²

► 3 . Smell

Man’s sense of smell may not be as keen as that of many animals, but it still has a major impact on the way we think. The areas of our brain that process smell are very close to the areas where we store memories and emotions. This allows, for example, to create a positive cognitive trigger when you open a nice-smelling package from your favourite brand.

Specialised packaging manufacturers have now come up with the idea of integrating microcapsules into the packaging.³ As soon as a customer touches the packaging, a scent is emitted. As an example, the Dutch brand Scotch & Soda is worth mentioning. They deliver anything but a boring package: an elegant black box, an invoice in golden letters, AND the smell of perfume when you unfold the silk paper. A unique experience that lingers.

► 4 . Hear

Most research around senses focuses on what we can see and feel. Research into the auditory properties of packaging is currently in its infancy. The fact is that certain packaging sounds are inextricably linked to a product. Think of the opening of a can of soft drink or the typical crunch of a bag of crisps.

A simple way to link sound to your packaging is to use a QR code. QR codes have been bridging the physical and digital worlds for years. By scanning the code, you can listen to a message on your smartphone. Another possibility is integrating printed electronics and RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) to add sound to a package.⁴ A push button on the packaging or a smart device can be used to play the sound clip.

You can even go a step further. Some apps have enough with seeing the packaging to play a multimedia message. British supermarket chain Tesco, for example, applied this principle in its wine department. Customers could simply ‘scan’ a wine bottle after which their smartphone showed a video of the winemaker in question.

► 5 . Taste

We are left with one of the five senses to scrutinise: our sense of taste. Colour and shape of packaging have a major impact on our perception of a product, especially when it comes to the taste of drinks and food.⁵

Charles Spence, a psychologist at Oxford University, studied numerous connections between packaging and our sense of taste. His research showed, for example, that a strawberry dessert tastes up to 10% sweeter in a white cup cake, rather than a black one. The taste of coffee is experienced twice as intensely when drunk from a white mug, rather than a transparent glass.

Moreover, the fact that packaging does have an impact on the perception of taste is shown by the following example from Coca-Cola. In 2011, Coca-Cola changed the look of its classic red cans for the first time in its 125-year history. The cans were given a white jacket and featured polar bears. Soon it was raining complaints from consumers about the taste of their favourite drink. Although Coca-Cola did not change the taste at all, they were forced to reintroduce the red cans. So you see… our senses can do crazy things sometimes.

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Sources:
¹ http://www.faqt.nl/recent/we-betalen-meer-voor-kleurige-producten/
2 https://www.flandersfood.com/artikel/2010/12/02/invloed-van-verpakkingsdesign-op-smaakperceptie/
³ https://www.packaginginnovation.com/packaging-design/innovative-packaging-2/smells-like-sale-scented-packaging-trending/
⁴ http://www.chokoe.nl/prikkel-zintuigen-intelligente-verpakkingen/
⁵ https://www.klbdkosher.org/news-and-articles/can-packaging-affect-taste/