Forget the old saying "You can't judge a book by its
cover"--at least when it comes to packaging a product. For
whether it's spaghetti sauce, toothpaste or detergent,
consumers judge products by their packaging all the time.
But the packaging that works in one country won't
necessarily work in another. For small-business exporters, this
means one thing: Forget the old axioms, and remember, it's
what's on the outside that counts.
"Color is the most important issue in packaging," says
Howard Alport, principal of Lipson-Alport-Glass & Associates, a
design and identity firm in Northbrook, Illinois. Although it's
hard to generalize, "red is a pretty positive color worldwide;
gold usually signifies quality," says Alport. And while green
has a healthy, low-fat connotation in the United States, it may not
convey the same message in other cultures.
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After color, the packaging elements consumers remember most are
shape, numbers and words, in that order. Preferences in package
shape and format (should you sell your toothpaste in tubes or
pumps?) vary by region. Even shapes on a package, such as the
graphics you use, affect the impact of your package. "People
recognize and remember packages that have unique shapes or
structures," says Alport.
Generally speaking, numbers and words should be kept to a
minimum, as demand is increasing in many areas of the world to
print two or more languages on packages. If space is severely
limited, says Alport, consider employing symbols instead of
words--a droplet symbol to convey moisture, for example. And, of
course, you need to investigate foreign translations of product and
brand names to make sure there's a fairly direct translation.
(When Alport took a gift of Frango mints to a Brazilian client, he
was dismayed to find out that in Portuguese, Frango translated to
"chicken.")
According to Alport, food product packaging tends to be more
culturally sensitive than that of cosmetics or personal-care items.
So if you're exporting food, you need to be extra-sensitive to
foreign consumers' biases.
Package size is another issue you must address. Keep in mind
that many overseas customers--buyers in Japan, Europe and Latin
America, particularly--don't have as much storage or freezer
space as we're used to in the United States and so prefer
smaller packages. In these countries and others, home freezer space
is typically limited to high-income families. Grocery stores, too,
usually have limited display space.
When making packaging decisions, Alport advises exporters to
"think globally but act locally." This means creating a
system of culturally diverse images that can be adapted to target
different world markets. "Often when we design a food package,
we leave space for the photography and allow each local market to
decide what should go there," says Alport. "If you're
selling sweet corn in Japan, for example, you might show it being
served on ice cream," a common practice in Japan.
Finally, cautions Alport, it's unwise to generalize about
any country. What works depends on the individual culture, the
product, the category and what the competition is doing. That means
research--and more research--is key to designing packaging that
wows your overseas customers. To assist you with this, contact a
packaging expert by calling the trade office of the country or
countries you're targeting. A well-
informed expert will be able to help you with multiple countries or
regions.
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