The power of packaging is to allure, encourage and convey secure messages with the use of its function and aesthetics formed out of elements such as fonts, wordplay, colours, shape and textiles (Maffei & Schifferstein, 2017; Silayoi and Speece, 2007; Prendergast and Pitt, 1996).
Packaging, therefore, can become a paratext, giving meaning to food. The packaging of the food influences the meaning of food through the mood and materials used to create the consumers’ expectations (Maffei & Schifferstein, 2017).
MARKET RESEARCH
Premium is perceived differently by different people (Cristini, Kauppinen-Räisänen, Barthod-Prothade, & Woodside, 2017; Phau & Prendergast, 2000). The concept of the premium is defined from the view of the customer. It can be measured by characteristics like quality, being unique, being authentic and the customer’s willingness to purchase (Ko et al., in press).
The attributes that represent quality, such as the country where the coffee comes from, the different types of coffee, promotion of the coffee origin, and the grade of certification labels that classify them as sustainable, influence the consumer to be motivated to pay for premium coffee (De Pelsmacker, Driesen and Rayp, 2005; Donnet, Weatherspoon and Hoehn, 2007; Cranfield, Henson, Northey and Masakure, 2010; Teuber and Herrmann, 2012; Salomone, 2003).
High-quality coffee products have shifted their focus to over time redesign coffee packaging to be more environmentally friendly, i.e. materials and packaging processes (Giang N. T. Nguyen and Tapan Sarker, 2018). Companies use graphic elements to communicate a level of sustainability through green graphics. The assumption is made that customers use visual elements like colour and material to evaluate whether a package is sustainable or not. This is only true if the elements clearly show sustainability (Magnier & Schoormans, 2015).
In the multi-sensory design process, sensory elements can be adjusted to convey a specifically designed message in such a way that all the senses add to the overall message (Schifferstein 2011). It has been proposed that multisensory packaging elements can contribute to the concept of premium branding (Wiedmann, Hennigs, Klarmann, & Behrens, 2013). Therefore this multisensory process (Schifferstein 2011) can be further developed by the support of how the customer perceives the quality through the various senses’ experience (Labbe et al. 2013).
DESIGN STRATEGIES
One part of the research step of the packaging design process is the design strategy. The foundation of successful packaging design is to formulate and gather the correct preference of the elements such as colour, font choice, layout, shape etc. from the participants. But first to understand these design elements one must first comprehend two concepts namely decorative semiotics and multisensory elements.
DECORATIVE SEMIOTICS
Graphic art cannot be separated from meaning found in social interaction (Panofsky, 1983). Any sign can be formulated to represent something else, therefore a sign can be seen as a symbol of an object or perception (Eco, 1976; Hoopes, 1991). ‘Decorative’ is a word used to express elements that enhances the appearance and therefore represent premiumness and quality. Semiotics in plain words is the study of signs and symbols to create a certain message. Ferdinand de Saussure explains in his semiotic framework the relation between the sign and the intended concept. The sign is anything that conveys meaning. This is a combination of the signifier= things that give meaning, such as a word or an image. Combined with the signified, what is evoked in the mind of the consumer, the mental concept. Saussure’s semiotic theoretical framework can be seen in Figure 1.
Fig. 1: Ferdinand de Saussure, Semiotic Framework (1959).
For example the colour gold as the signifier, which could represent luxury, quality or premiumness as the signified concept. It comes down to finding the meaning from the signs and symbols, but to formulate the correct meaning one must first look at multisensory signs and symbols.
PERCEIVED IDEA OF MULTISENSORY PREMIUM PACKAGING
Multisensory is when the packaging elements are designed in such a way that the consumer simultaneously use as many human senses when interacting with the packaging elements. Resulting in an enhancement of the shopping experience and increases the concept of premiumness.
Multiple searchers have expressed the growth in demand for more quality sensory elements from the coffee consumers (Hoppert, Mai, Zahn, Hoffmann, and Rohm 2012). Nevertheless, to reply to this demand, an understanding of the consumer’s perception of multisensory packaging is required. Therefore one can apply the Multisensory Analysis of Product Packaging (MAPP) framework approach. This framework can furthermore contribute to the design process of multisensory packaging.
This approach furthermore expresses how various sensory signals interrelate with one another (for example, colour affects the smell experience, etc.) (Velasco & Spence, 2019). The MAPP framework approach is displayed in figure 2. When a product packaging is examined numerous high and low-level elements can contribute to the communication to a consumer’s senses (Velasco & Spence, 2019), high-level elements can be seen as conceptual aspects (Thompson, 2016). Based on the response type, a similarity could be formed which could strengthen a specific message (for example, ‘premiumness’) (Velasco & Spence, 2019).
Fig. 2: Carlos Velasco & Charles Spence, The MAPP Framework (2019).
The value features level whether high or low (Crilly et al., 2004) could be reasoned to be described by the 3 (S) model namely sensory, semantic, and symbolic levels (Thomson, 2016). As well as the affected level where a consumer evaluates the packaging with their approximately agreement or disagreement and packaging encouragement (Velasco et al., 2016c).
On the sensory level, the standard response forms part of the sensory incentives with no clear symbolic meaning; for example, the shape of packaging, texture or sound (Velasco & Spence, 2019). The second ‘S’ is the semantic level that creates similarity meaning through the sensory cues for example brand quality, colours and imagery (Krishna, Elder, & Caldara, 2010; Thomson, 2016). The last ‘S’ is the symbolic level that is signified through marking sensory cues, for example, the logo or font choice (Velasco & Spence, 2019).
The outcome effect of the high and low-level sensory signs can be directed by the consumer’s goals and then influence their evaluation and behaviour (Karnal, Machiels, Orth, & Mai, 2016). A consumer goal could be in search of a quality product and therefore, be guided by response aspects that create the perception of brand quality (Little, 2014; Bajaj & Bond, 2018).
