ALEJANDRO GOIC

Today, the increasingly rapid changes in visually-oriented society forces designers and manufacturers to use the past as references to create an emotional value, simple reminiscence and technological assurance in creating a sophisticated product for consumers. The shape of packaging shape, the construction and its functions can determine whether product is successful or not. The visual appearances of a packaging play a significant factor to show the ‘style’ and first impression for the consumer’s judgements. Consumer products not only reflect contemporary visual standards but they also reflect the other high-tech standards such as professional products through its packaging attributes.

The consumers experience ‘delights’ by a ‘design-inspired’ product (Utterback et al., 2006). A product with simple, superficial and clear design of packaging attributes enhances the product’s appearances and stand out more than other brand competitors. The software and services enhance the value of product where the consumer remembers the product’s ‘delight’ experience, the packaging and the design aesthetics. According to Utterback et al. (2006), the ‘design-inspired’ product created by an innovative technology offers a product with good quality and at a low cost. A good quality product accomplished by the aspirations of elegance and excellence creates well-ordered and simple design of packaging. The rapid changes in product basic supplies lead the manufacturers and designers into creating good packaging that can be recycled to reduce wastes. Rundh (2013) argues that packaging is not only just a packaging, it is a process of human and form interaction where it can be used as communication channel, an ergonomic tool, a packed unit, a brand builder, an environmentalist, a piece of craftsmanship and a fun challenge for companies. Additionally, manufacturers, designers and marketers can embrace the ‘design-inspired’ value as company strategy

in order to understand in-depth problems that contribute to the long-term success of organisation (Beverland and Farrelly, 2011).

Meanwhile, Forsey (2013) states that the product form plays an significant element to allow consumer to define a product and its functions. The form of product differentiates the product design from art craft to a form with functions. Therefore, the functional attributes of packaging define its first impression of features and characteristics when the consumer sees and feels the product. Consumer products are designed with functional elements of packaging attributes and in in that way defines what kind or type of product it is.

Brand managers and designers should create reasonable facts and ideas to make the characteristics of packaging viable so as to encourage the consumer purchase decision making option. The advertisement and packaging of products must comprise significant information to draw the consumer’s attention in their decision making towards the brand. The sense of brand’s advertising can position the brand development in fulfilling both consumer’s need and manufacturer’s needs (Czerniawski and Maloney, 1999).

Thomson (2006) suggests that brand manager use celebrities as ‘human brands’ to develop a strong brand promotion. This effort is to enhance the product’s perceived value and equity by employing celebrities in branding techniques such as managing, trademarking and licensing using their names. The brand manager can use these celebrities to attract the consumer’s attention and to help the brand to be noticeable compared to other competitors. Moreover, O’Mahony and Meenaghan (1998) state that to endorse a celebrity, the brand manager must ensure that the chosen celebrity gives great impact to the consumer’s perceptions in selecting the product. In this context, the

celebrity must have a strong appeal consistent with the brand as the celebrity’s media images and lifestyles will influence consumer’s purchase intention.

Recently in popular culture, celebrities are often seen as the personification of beauty. Almost all top listed celebrities have ideal figures and attractive appearances. They are always on magazine covers and each of these celebrities captures media headlines and these characteristics are valuable for the purpose of brand advertisement. They are recognised due to their popularity to become ambassadors for brands.

Figure 2.17 Herbal Essences using celebrities in advertising campaign

This is part of the marketing strategy for a company to be well established in the market and to reach the intended consumers. Figure 2.17 shows that the brand ‘Herbal Essences’ promotion of their product with striking and noticeable celebrity images. The brand also uses celebrities as brand ambassadors in their promotion campaign. Leighton Meester, Mischa Barton and Nicole Scherzinger are popular actresses and singer who become Herbal Essences’ ambassadors to represent the new ‘Herbal Essences’ packaging.

• Word of Mouth

There are a number of studies indicating the significance of Word of Mouth (WOM) that can influence consumers. Sweeney, Soutar, & Mazzarol (2008) emphasise that word-of-mouth is a significant promotional tool because consumers share information about the product and their experiences using the product with each other. The product reviews about features, characteristics and qualities are shared in the social media and this will influence consumers’ purchase decision and intention (Hennig-Thurau, Gwinner, Walsh, & Gremler, 2004).

Herr, Kardes, & Kim (1991) say that word-of-mouth communication can be influential in the consumer’s purchasing potential for products. However, in the service context, the consumer’s potential for purchasing are tangible and correlated with higher risk than are products because it is complex to evaluate before purchase (Herr et al., 1991). The consumers’ perceptions towards the service or product’s satisfaction can be generated in the event or specific conditions through word-of-mouth.

Wang, Yu, & Wei (2012) argue that the social media provide three conditions that encourage consumer socialisation among peers online;

• Blogs, instant messaging and social networking sites all provide

communication tools that make the socialisation process easy and convenient.

• Interesting numbers of consumers visit social media websites to communicate with others and find information to help them make various consumption- related decisions.

• Social media facilitate education and information because they feature

Word-of-mouth has an impact and significance in the market place that influences consumer behaviour and their buying decision. Personal experiences and others’ experiences are significant in increasing initial knowledge and information about the product and effect on consumer decision- making process (Podnar and Javernik, 2012). Social media is also used to influence the performance of business which affect market perceptions of the company’s offerings and generate loyal customers willing to pay a premium price for a trusted brand (Simoes, Singh, & Perin, 2015).

• Viral

Ho and Dempsey (2010) define viral marketing as a new marketing communication medium to influence consumer purchasing decision and motivation. Also, according to Ahmad, Vveinhardt, & Ahmed (2014), viral marketing involves frequent word-of- mouth communication. The positive and negative information from others’ experiences on social media strongly builds consumer awareness about the product and affect their decision-making process.

Kotler and Keller (2016) explain that consumers pass the information about the product, services, audio or video to others through online media such as YouTube, Vimeo, Google Video, online advertisers. The interactive social media and website are significant in marketing for consumers to share their opinions with others about the product. Solomon (2013) states that website and social media are places for consumer to interact with each other and discuss about the products. Therefore, viral marketing is more effective in promoting the brand or product than the traditional advertising forms (Leskovec, Adamic, & Huberman, 2007).

According to De Bruyn & Lilien (2008), there are significant correlations between viral marketing and consumer behaviour effect on decision-making process at several phases:

• Awareness stage. The stage of consumer awareness depends on the first decision whether they open the email and its content. The brand’s name on the sender recipient’s name play a significant factor in building trust between the sender and receiver, and indirectly influencing consumer to open and read the message.

• Interest stage. Interest in product may develop after they have read the content and purpose of email such as the product or service information and offer which lead to consumer’s making decision based on the receiver’s experiences, needs, and preferences. The receiver then will investigate the cost and benefits of the products or services to them.

• Final decision. At this stage, after the receiver has analysed the cost and benefits, they will decide whether to buy or not the products or services. Therefore, the products or services information, the cost and perceived benefits are significant factors that the designers and marketers must consider when designing new products and services because they influence consumer purchase decision- making process.

According to Cheung, Xiao, & Liu, (2014), social media are an important predictors because they extend information of the product. The consumers are focused on stimulus information such as review rating, review volume as well as the quality of the product. Unfortunately, consumers with less experience and familiarity about a brand are less interested to process additional information. Hence, they tend to following others’ actions and opinions in their purchase decisions. The positive online word-of-mouth communication would create a greater relationship between the consumer and the promoter to discuss about the product also to improve the consumer’s trust and expectations towards the brand.

Figure 2.18 Consumer reviews about a product on the Internet

Subsequently, action-based social information and opinion-based social information have a strong impact on consumer purchasing decisions. However, it does not really influence consumers with a higher level of expertise in particular brand. The role of social information reduces the mental processing effort and the consumer has more confidence about the quality of product than opinion-based information such as from peer customer review. Additionally, the consumers spend large amount of time sharing product-related platforms experience in an online community. They have forums in social media and discuss or share their social comparative information with others.