Gérard Caron (the leading international design spokesman and founder of Carré Noir, the first design agency in France) hereunder unveils the mechanisms of the consumer’s buying behaviour and the role that packaging design plays in that respect.
How do we attract the consumer?
The answer lies mainly in the product identity, its presentation, the clever way it can be used…in a word, in its design. Its objective will basically be to open an area of desires in the consumer’s imagination. The languages used by designers are in the realms of the irrational, in sensations, instinct, archetypes, and received ideas that bombard all individuals, and in particular the consumer pushing his shopping trolley or the executive in a car dealer’s showroom! We know that consumers do not have a single form of behaviour when it comes to products. The irrational mixes with the rational to varying degrees according to the nature of the product and the circumstances surrounding the purchase…
The four types of buying behaviour
1. The functional attitude: The buyer only takes into account the purely utilitarian and functional aspect of the product. Any suggestion and any appeal to the imagination would be superfluous. In this case the buyer sticks to the product’s functional value.
2. The analytical attitude: The consumer turns into a genuine professional buyer, himself inventing his own way of buying. He weighs up, compares, and anlalysis the quality, the performance, the prices, and the novelty factor. He decides freely and in full knowledge of the facts…or at least he thinks he does. The products of reference brand analyse the four main types of consumer behaviour in the supermarket choice in so far as they add to rational arguments.
3. The imaginary attitude: This is the attitude that links the products to certain fashion values and to new forms of behaviour, with strong consumer identification with the brand. Here, design can be linked to the impact of fashion, and an appeal to the senses is then a very important asset. Many products aimed at teenagers fall into this category.
4. The recreational attitude: The purchaser distances himself from his day-to-day life, he seeks pleasure, humour, a break with reality. This behaviour is obviously linked to impulsive « fun » purchases or exclusive products or gadgets….
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