Influencing Factors of Consumer Psychology in Packaging Design

In addition to solving the basic principles of design, good packaging design must focus on the psychological activities of consumers in order to stand out from other similar products.

First, consumer motivation

The most direct goal of product packaging is to motivate consumers to make purchases. The first consideration in formulating a product packaging plan should be this goal. Second, even if consumers do not plan to purchase such products, they should also prompt them to make a good impression on the brand, packaging and brand of the product and the manufacturer.

The consumer's decision to spend money to buy something is driven by a certain motivation. People's actions are generally dictated by certain subjective internal causes, namely motivation, and motivation is closely related to needs. Motivation is the reflection of the needs under certain conditions, which is transformed by human needs. In other words, people act in order to meet certain needs. Consumers buy something from the store because they need it. As winter approaches, people will go to the shops to buy down coats or overcoats to resist the cold.

Motivation comes from the need to transform, but not all of the people's needs can be translated into motivating people to move. Needs are often experienced in the form of desire. For example, many people want their skin to be healthy and beautiful. This is human nature. However, if cosmetics such as anti-wrinkle cosmetic creams do not appear, this desire does not encourage people to buy cosmetics, but merely exists in the form of wishes. Only when a manufacturer produces such a product and advertises it so that the consumer understands that there is a cosmetic product that meets her desire for beauty, at this time, the consumer will go to the store to purchase such cosmetics. This is a purchase action driven by the desire to satisfy the desire. Only then does the need really translate into motivation. Become a driving force for people's buying behavior.

People's needs are hierarchical, and many psychologists have conducted in-depth discussions. Maslow, an American psychologist, is one of them. He divides people's needs into five levels:

1, physiological needs: eat, drink, air, etc.;
2. Security needs: The need for freedom in danger and fear;
3, the need to belong to love: get love from relatives and friends, set up family needs;
4, the need for respect, the need for honor achievements;
5, self-reality needs.

Among them, self-reality needs include the need for knowledge; aesthetic needs; the need for their own growth and development; the need to fully develop their talents. Some consumers buy goods, on the one hand, for use, and on the other hand, to show their status, education, and appreciation. For example, when "Big Brother" (mobile phone) has just entered the Chinese market, many people who buy the "Big Brother" are using it. In addition, when they talk about business or in public places, they show that their "economic strength" meets their vanity. It can be said that this is a purchase motivation that satisfies spiritual needs. therefore. In formulating the positioning of different commodity packaging designs, the needs of consumers and types of motivation should be investigated. For targeted packaging design.

Second, the purchase behavior characteristics

1. The purchase behavior of the consumer can be both purchasing to meet physical and material needs and purchasing to meet social and spiritual needs. For example, the purchase of tobacco, wine, vegetables, milk powder, clothing, shoes and hats, etc., is basically to satisfy physiological needs such as hunger, nutrition, and heat preservation. Buying various books, subscribing to various magazines, purchasing color TVs, VCDs, etc. are for work or spiritual needs.

2. The purchase behavior of consumers is sometimes dictated by an incentive, sometimes by a combination of multiple and complex motives. These motives are often intertwined to form a buying behavior system. Motivation to satisfy spiritual and social needs is often accompanied by motivation to satisfy physical and material needs. For example, low-income consumers tend to focus only on the value of their use, and the demand for goods is cheap. This is the act of buying goods that is governed by a purchase motive. The rich consumer behavior of economic income tends to pay more attention to the quality of commodity packaging. This part of the consumer's purchase motivation is quite complex, is the physical, physical needs and spiritual, social needs intertwined, in which spiritual and social needs accounted for a dominant position. With the continuous improvement of living standards, the need for consumption is constantly changing. When establishing the goals and positioning of packaging design, it is necessary to consider people's social life and spiritual needs.

3, the needs of consumers are basically met by the low-level physiological needs to meet the advanced spirit and social needs. For most people: "Take enough food and then know and honor", which reflects the need for development. However, the advanced spirit and social needs do not arise spontaneously, but only after the influence of the social reality environment and the laws of education and market development. The formation of consumer high-level needs is also guided and influenced by packaging design to a certain extent, that is, consumers' purchase motivation is guided by commodity packaging. For example, the packaging design of mineral water, if it only promotes the role of thirst quencher and ignores the minerals, trace elements, and health and hygiene requirements of human body contained in the water, the effect will not be very good. Because the needs of modern consumers for drinking water not only quench thirst, but also to add some of the necessary physical elements in the body. The design should mainly reflect its source of water quality (natural mineral water), containing a large amount of various minerals required by the human body, and ensuring safe and healthy drinking. In this way, consumers will be infected and they will purchase mineral water according to the instructions of the packaging design, so as to meet people's physiological and spiritual needs and pursuits. Only by knowing oneself and knowing oneself and understanding the laws of consumers' purchase motives can the packaging guide the consumption.

Third, the psychological factors in the design

1, attracting attention is the first factor to enhance the packaging effect. Attention is a feature of people's understanding of the process of psychological activity, and it is the direction and concentration of people on what they know. Phenomenon is not a kind of independent psychological process, people will show the characteristics of attention when they are perceiving, remembering or thinking. Analyze from psychology, a packaging design wants consumers to pay attention to and understand, comprehend, and form a solid memory. It is the text, color, graphics, sound, etc. in the packaging of the eyes, ears, and sensory organs of humans. The novelty of conditions is inseparable.

In people's visual cognition activities, they are not passively stimulated by objective stimuli. Instead, it is conducted under the interaction of objective stimuli and human subjective internal psychological factors. The text, picture, color and shape of the product packaging are stimulants for the “visual elements” to consumers. These stimulants must possess certain novelty features to attract consumers’ attention.

2, emotions and associations. It's not too difficult for designers to be eye-catching for packaging, but to be unique and to reflect the cultural connotation and contribution points (requirements) of the product is the most critical in the design process.

In the product packaging design element, the color impact is the strongest. The colors used in the packaging of goods will create associations, induce emotions, and change the purchasing psychology. However, using colors to stimulate people's emotions should follow certain rules. Psychological studies believe that when drawing food packaging, do not use blue or green color. The use of orange or orange is reminiscent of bumper harvests and maturation, which has led to the purchase of food by the appetite of customers. Just as in our real life, consumers buy supplement products, and most of them are satisfied with the packaging of large-area warm-colored products. And for cleaning products, the cold-colored packaging is more excited. This is both the subjective cause of the commodity and the emotional association of consumers.

3, successful packaging of goods can not only lead to consumer emotions and associations, but also should make consumers "overcome."

Psychology thinks that memory is a reappearance of what people have experienced in the past. Memory is an important part of the process of psychological understanding. The basic process includes remembering, keeping, recalling, and recognizing. Among them, remembering and keeping is the premise; recall and recognition are the result. Only by remembering and keeping firmly, memories and recognition can be achieved.

Therefore, to enable consumers to remember product packaging design, we must reflect the distinctive personality of the product, concise and clear text, map, image, but also reflect the cultural characteristics of goods and modern consumer fashion, in order to allow consumers to remember.

People's psychological activities are extremely delicate and difficult to ponder, and people often buy products based on their own impressions. The psychology test of goods packaging to consumers shows that beauty and ugliness, elegance and vulgarity, attention and exclusion, these psychological feelings are not only different for men, women and children, but also vary greatly depending on the preferences of countries, regions and individuals. . Therefore, as a designer must understand the market, study the factors of the design form and analyze the various psychology of the consumer. Only in this way can we accurately explore the law of packaging design and consumer mental activities, so as to improve the effectiveness of packaging design and urge consumers to take actions to purchase goods.

Source: Chinese Designer