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Contents
Introduction.................................................................................................................................................2
Objectives of the study................................................................................................................................3
Literature review.........................................................................................................................................3
Theoretical foundation.................................................................................................................................4
Research Methodology................................................................................................................................4
Statement of the problem.........................................................................................................................4
Sources of data collection........................................................................................................................5
Sample description..................................................................................................................................5
Data analysis and interpretation...................................................................................................................5
Demographic profile................................................................................................................................6

Introduction
Packaging of food products can be dated back to about 5000 years when only leaves were used
for the purpose. Wood and glass packaging had been around for around the same time. In 1823,
metal packaging in the form of canisters legally came into existence. Paper and cardboard
packaging followed suit in the 1900s. General use of plastics as a packaging material started after
World War II.

Packaging originally was used only for the functions of transport and storage, and indeed, the
gradual rise of different packaging materials as enunciated above, arose specifically for
furthering the above mentioned functions. The aesthetic side of any product or service was of
minimal importance as the psychological and physical needs of consumers were directed only at
the quality of the material and its price and not inclined towards aesthetics. Brand image of the
company was also a dominant factor playing on the minds of the consumers. However, the steep
rise of competition on a global scale, and the rapidly changing lifestyles of people around the
world, gradually made it important to differentiate products on factors other than quality and
price. Advertising media started diversifying rapidly from print to radio to television, and
customers also became more and more aware of their own aesthetic preferences.

Nowadays the role of packaging has evolved to become an impactful selling proposition to the
customers. Though the dominant factors, especially for the middle class people, still are price,
quality and overall brand image, packaging is having an increasing influence on the buying
behaviors, especially on impulse buying. Hence it is gradually becoming a decisive tool for sales
promotion for almost all FMCG brands, big or small.

The aim of this dissertation paper is three-fold. One, to gauge how much priority does a
consumer assign to packaging, vis-à-vis other factors of a product like the brand image of the
manufacturer, the quality of the product and its price, two, how do different aspects of packaging
influence consumer buying decisions or buying behavior.

Objectives of the study

 To find out what importance does packaging hold to consumers as compared to other
factors like brand image of company, quality of product and price, when they consider
buying a packaged food product.
 To analyze if the above preferences change significantly or not with change in gender and
employment status.
 To analyze the relative importance of different aspects of packaging to consumers.
 To establish a predictive model of consumer buying behavior based upon the relative
importance attached to each of the aspects of packaging.

Literature review

Literature review on this topic of study shows that there is no fixed way of categorizing the
aspects of packaging. Studies have also shown that there is no global consensus on either the
importance attached to packaging w.r.t other factors stated above, or the relative importance
attached to different aspects of packaging. They change based on the geographic setting,
demographics, lifestyles and standard of living. Buying habits are seen to change based on the
phases of life the consumers are passing through.

Descriptive research conducted by Rita KuvyKaite (2009) analyses the influences of packaging
on consumer purchases. According to that research packaging enhances brand identity and brand
perception of the products. Packaging also imparts unique value to the products (Underwood,
Klein & Burke, 2001), serves to differentiate between products and stimulates customer buying
behavior (Wells, Farley & Armstrong, 2007). According to these researches packaging is an
integral part of the IMC and a significant influencer in customer purchase decisions. Rita
conducted comparative analysis of scientific literature and did empirical research on what
constituted effective packaging when seen from the marketing point of view: size, form, color,
graphics, material and flavor. Kotler (2003) also distinguished between similar factors when
analyzing effective packaging decisions: size, form, material, color, text and brand. Rita’s
research result shows that packaging can be an effective tool in today’s marketing
communication and needs to be analyzed further in greater details.

Azad et al. (2012) investigated the relationship between packaging of food products for children
and their influence on the parents’ purchase decisions. The research constituted 3 hypotheses: the
first assumed that there was significant relationship between packaging characteristics of
children’s food products and parents’ purchase intentions or willingness. The second analyzed
the relationship between same package characteristics and parents’ priority purchasing decision.
The third hypothesis studied the relationship between children’s food selection and parents’
purchase behavior. The research brought out the fact that packaging did play a significant role on
the parent’s intentions.

Size and color are important aspects of packaging and graphical characteristics such as color type
contribute significantly to impulse buying behavior (Rundh, 2009). Shape and structure are other
important aspects of packaging as these could influence purchasing product as well. This has
motivated many design makers to concentrate on products shape and structure (Raghubir &
Greenleaf, 2006). A good packaging must include proper labeling and this is a good way to
express producers' concern on benefit of using products (Wells et al., 2007).

Butkevičiené et al. (2008) discussed the impact of consumer packaging communication on

consumer decision making process. The results of their empirical research confirmed that
theoretical package communication must contain the effect of package form and size in the stage
of need perception. The effect of the package graphics, special offers and package ecology
communication need to be marked as less important in the stage of alternatives' assessment in the
model.

Theoretical foundation

Research Methodology

Statement of the problem

Empirical research works on whether packaging is a significantly important factor in purchase

decisions of packaged food products, is scant and divided. Also the abundance of scientific
literature on the different elements of packaging do not provide a unanimous picture on which
aspects of packaging are decisive from sales point of view and which aren’t .Hence this study
also does not attempt to provide any general view because there is none as the literature around
the world shows. This study specifically aims to study the perceptions and behaviors of a general
customer in Kolkata, what importance they attach to packaging and what aspects of packaging
they consider important and influential in purchase decisions. It also seeks to analyze if these
preferences vary by gender or employment levels as these are essential elements of
segmentation, targeting and positioning. Finally, this study seeks to understand, to what extent
these consumer perceptions can predict if a customer will actually buy a packaged product or
not.

Research hypotheses

Hypothesis 1:

H0: Importance levels attached to packaging do not vary with gender.

H1: Importance levels attached to packaging varies significantly with gender.

Hypothesis 2:

H0: Importance levels attached to packaging do not vary with employment levels

H1: Importance levels attached to packaging varies significantly with employment levels.

Sources of data collection

An online questionnaire was floated for the purpose. The questionnaire consisted of 7 questions
mainly designed to take responses on a 5 point Likert scale. The questions were designed to
collect 3 types of data: the demographics, the importance attached to packaging vis-à-vis other
factors like brand image, price and quality of a packaged product, and the level of influence
attached to different aspects of packaging.

The questionnaire is listed in the annexure.

Sample description

The population of this study is mainly students (both graduation and post graduation levels),
employed, unemployed and self-employed young adults. Everyone is from Kolkata region. The
questionnaire was floated to around 200 people but only 80 responded out of which 1 had to be
discarded because of faulty entry. As time was limited, hence sample was collected using
convenience sampling method.

Data analysis and interpretation

Analysis will be presented in two parts. The first part will focus on packaging vis-à-vis other
factors to be considered during purchase. The second part will focus on the different factors of
packaging and their influence on purchase decisions.
Demographic profile

The final respondents came down to a total of 79 in number. Out of them 41 or 52% are male. 38
or 48% are female. 20 of the respondents or approximately 25% of the respondents are
employed. 57 or 72% of the respondents are unemployed and 2 or 3% of the respondents are
running their own business, i.e. they are self employed.

Item Count
Total respondents 79
Male 41
Female 38
Employed 20
Unemployed 57
Self-employed 2

GENDER

Male
Female
48%
52%
 EMPLOYMENT STATUS
3%

25%
Emlpoyed
Unemployed
Self-employed

72%

Analysis: part 1

Response summary

imp_qualit
Item imp_brand_image imp_price y imp_packaging
Total Mean 3.975 4.076 4.418 3.494
Mean ( by Male) 3.951 4.024 4.317 3.415
Mean (by Female) 4 4.132 4.526 3.579
Mean ( by Employed) 3.9 3.75 4.45 3.4
Mean ( by Unemployed) 4.018 4.193 4.404 3.509
Mean ( by Self-employed) 3.5 4 4.5 4
 MEAN RESPONSE
Total Mean

4.42
3.98 4.08
3.49

imp_brand_image imp_price imp_quality imp_packaging

MEAN RESPONSE (BY FEMALE)

Mean (by Female)

4.53
4 4.13
3.58

imp_brand_image imp_price imp_quality imp_packaging

 MEAN RESPONSE (BY MALE)
Mean ( by Male)

4.32
3.95 4.02

3.42

imp_brand_image imp_price imp_quality imp_packaging

MEAN RESPONSE (EMPLOYED)

Mean ( by Emlpoyed)

4.45

3.9
3.75
3.4

imp_brand_image imp_price imp_quality imp_packaging

 MEAN RESPONSE (UN-EMPLOYED)
Mean ( by Unemployed)

4.4
4.19
4.02
3.51

imp_brand_image imp_price imp_quality imp_packaging

MEAN RESPONSE ( SELF-EMPLOYED)

Mean ( by Self-employed)

4.5
4 4
3.5

imp_brand_image imp_price imp_quality imp_packaging

Analysis of the above data and plots show that on an average, packaging is given the least
importance and people are more quality conscious. This is irrespective of their gender or
employment status. Also, except for employed people in the sample, people of every other
category attach to price the second most importance. These can be attached to the fact that in
Kolkata the lifestyle choices still mostly adhere to middle class standards and perceptions, where
factors like price and quality are very sensitive and factors like aesthetics take a backseat.
Families having constrained resources usually engage in high involvement purchases so that
colorful marketing don’t entice them in buying an inferior product. They usually go for value for
money products, those that are of the best quality within the budget. Given that 72% of the
respondents are unemployed; this perception is even more prominent. Even employed people
look for a good brand image after considering quality, as a known and reliable brand is mostly
synonymous to quality.

PACKAGING

3.58

3.42

Mean ( by Male) Mean (by Female)

 PACKAGING

3.51
3.4

Mean ( by Emlpoyed) Mean ( by Unemployed) Mean ( by Self-employed)

Group Statistics
Gender N Mean Std. Deviation Std. Error Mean
imp_packaging Male 41 3.41 .805 .126
Female 38 3.58 .642 .104

Independent Samples Test

Levene's Test for
Equality of
Variances t-test for Equality of Means
Std. 95% Confidence
Mean Error Interval of the
Sig. (2- Differenc Differenc Difference
F Sig. t df tailed) e e Lower Upper
imp_packaging Equal 2.079 .153 -.997 77 .322 -.164 .165 -.492 .164
variances
assumed

Equal - 75.36 .318 -.164 .163 -.490 .161

variances not 1.006 3
assumed
The above analysis shows that the mean importance attached to packaging by male respondents
is 3.41 and that by female respondents is 3.58. Significance value in Levene’s test comes to
0.153 which means variance difference is not statistically significant. Hence the corresponding
significance value is 0.322 which means importance levels attached to packaging do not vary
significantly with gender. Hence we fail to reject H0 in hypothesis 1.

ANOVA

imp_packaging

Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Sig.

Between Groups .701 2 .351 .649 .525

Within Groups 41.046 76 .540

Total 41.747 78

Multiple Comparisons
Dependent Variable: imp_packaging
LSD
95% Confidence Interval
Mean Difference Std. Lower Upper
(I) Employment status (J) Employment status (I-J) Error Sig. Bound Bound
Unemployed Employed .109 .191 . -.27 .49
571
Self-employed -.491 .529 . -1.54 .56
( Entrepreneur) 356
Employed Unemployed -.109 .191 . -.49 .27
571
Self-employed -.600 .545 . -1.69 .49
( Entrepreneur) 274
Self-employed Unemployed .491 .529 . -.56 1.54
( Entrepreneur) 356
Employed .600 .545 . -.49 1.69
274
Analysis of the above data and results show that importance levels attached to packaging do not
vary significantly with employment status also as the significance value is 0.525. Hence we fail
to reject H0 in Hypothesis 2 as well.

So in a general way it can be put that the respondents are more or less unanimous among
themselves in how important they perceive packaging to be during purchasing a packaged
product, whether we categorize them by gender or employment status.

Analysis: part 2

Reliability Analysis

Reliability analysis was conducted to measure the reliability and internal consistency of the 5
independent variables which collect the influence levels of the various aspects of packaging on
purchase behavior of a packaged product, as well as one dependent variable which records how
much interested people are in buying packaged product.

Reliability Statistics

Cronbach's Alpha N of Items

.736 6

Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient is above 0.6 that is 0.736 which indicates decent internal
consistency.

Factor Analysis

Factor analysis was conducted so that the different aspects of packaging could be grouped into 1
or more factors underlying the different aspects. From the descriptive analysis provided below, it
already looked as if respondents gave more weightage to aspects that were more aesthetics
oriented than those which appealed to logic. It was important and necessary to carry out factor
analysis to find out if statistically it was indeed so.

KMO and Bartlett's Test

Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy. .617
Bartlett's Test of Sphericity Approx. Chi-Square 92.915
df 10
Sig. .000
KMO Test value of 0.617 (greater than 0.5) shows that sample size is adequate for the purpose of
research. Bartlett’s Test of Sphericity with significance value of 0.000 shows that the different
aspects of packaging do correlate among themselves to some extent and the correlation matrix is
not an identity matrix (The analysis of correlation is presented separately below).

Communalities
Initial Extraction
package_color 1.000 .678
background_image 1.000 .835
quality_pckging 1.000 .616
printed_info 1.000 .593
fontstyle_and_font_size 1.000 .698
Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis.

The communalities table above shows that variance in ‘background_image’ can be best
explained by its underlying factor, followed by ‘ fontstyle_and_font_size’ and ‘ package_color’
respectively. Extraction values for ‘quality_packaging’ and ‘printed_info’ were lower; thereby
indicating that underlying factor could only loosely explain the variance in these variables.

Total Variance Explained

Extraction Sums of Squared Rotation Sums of Squared
Initial Eigenvalues Loadings Loadings
% of Cumulative % of Cumulativ % of Cumulative
Component Total Variance % Total Variance e% Total Variance %
1 2.290 45.795 45.795 2.290 45.795 45.795 2.016 40.314 40.314
2 1.130 22.606 68.401 1.130 22.606 68.401 1.404 28.086 68.401
3 .769 15.388 83.788
4 .538 10.757 94.545
5 .273 5.455 100.000
Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis.

Both the data in the above table and the scree plot below shows that only two components have
eigen values greater than 1, indicating that extraction of only these two components would be
significant for this research. Moreover, both these components or factors could in total explain
approximately 68% of the variance in the data.
 Rotated Component Matrixa
Component
1 2
background_image .911 .066
package_color .823 -.004
fontstyle_and_font_size .699 .457
quality_pckging .018 .785
printed_info .135 .758
Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis.
Rotation Method: Varimax with Kaiser Normalization.
a. Rotation converged in 3 iterations.

The most important conclusion from factor analysis can be drawn from the above table which
clearly shows that 3 of the aspects load more on to one component ( background_image,
package_color and fontstle_and_font_size) and two load more on two another component
( quality_pckging and printed_info). This fact is also very apparent in the component plot below.
Hence, the 3 of them can be grouped under the aesthetics factor and the other 2 can be grouped
under the logical factor. This definitely went in line with my assumption from the data collected
from the descriptive analysis. People indeed gave more weightage to all those aspects which can
be termed aesthetic.
Descriptive Analysis

Descriptive Statistics
N Minimum Maximum Mean Std. Deviation
purchase_behav 79 1 5 3.57 .915
package_color 79 2 5 4.09 .880
background_image 79 2 5 4.04 .912
quality_pckging 79 1 5 3.81 1.063
printed_info 79 1 5 3.97 1.025
fontstyle_and_font_size 79 1 5 4.29 .908
Valid N (listwise) 79
Above data indicates that font style and font size has the highest mean value of 4.29 and
purchase behavior has the least mean value of 3.57. The second highest mean is for package
color which is 4.09 and third highest being background image with a mean of 4.04.

The above table hence shows that people are mostly neutral when it comes to their interest in
purchasing, slightly bordering on the upside or the moderately important zone. However data
shows that when people do decide to focus on packaging, they focus more on the aesthetic side
of it such as fonts, color and background image and less on the logical or practical sides such as
quality of the packaging material and the printed information on it.

Correlation Analysis

Correlations
purchase_be package_c background_i quality_pck printed_i fontstyle_and_fon
hav olor mage ging nfo t_size
** **
purchase_behav Pearson 1 .525 .649 .178 .111 .523**
Correlat
ion
Sig. (2- .000 .000 .116 .329 .000
tailed)
N 79 79 79 79 79 79
** **
package_color Pearson .525 1 .603 .142 .102 .385**
Correlat
ion
Sig. (2- .000 .000 .213 .371 .000
tailed)
N 79 79 79 79 79 79
background_imag Pearson .649** .603** 1 .060 .193 .621**
e Correlat
ion
Sig. (2- .000 .000 .597 .088 .000
tailed)
N 79 79 79 79 79 79
*
quality_pckging Pearson .178 .142 .060 1 .254 .284*
Correlat
ion
Sig. (2- .116 .213 .597 .024 .011
tailed)
N 79 79 79 79 79 79
 printed_info Pearson .111 .102 .193 .254* 1 .352**
Correlat
ion
Sig. (2- .329 .371 .088 .024 .001
tailed)
N 79 79 79 79 79 79
** ** ** * **
fontstyle_and_fon Pearson .523 .385 .621 .284 .352 1
t_size Correlat
ion
Sig. (2- .000 .000 .000 .011 .001
tailed)
N 79 79 79 79 79 79
**. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).
*. Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).