People tend to judge the product by their packaging! This article aims to offer some insights into the watch packaging design for the China market, from the perspective of consumer psychology.
Packaging plays an extremely important role in any of those consumer goods. While a wrist watches is usually a symbol of one's status or loaded with personal emotional attachments. Therefore, not only the watch itself should, no doubt, be excellently manufactured, but the design of the watch packaging box must not be slighted over – it must match the grade of the watch. Throughout the marketing & circulation process, packaging communicates with consumers through its unique visual expression to influence their first impressions. The first sight of the packaging can either arouse their interest in the product and result in buying, or lead to poor sales performance when a dull packaging was simply overlooked by consumers or even worse, offend them.
Consumer psychology research shows that consumers have complex psychological activities before and after purchasing goods. The differences in age, gender, occupation, ethnicity, education level, social environment among many other aspects distinguish many different consumer groups and consumer psychology characteristics. According to the survey of the Chinese Social Investigation Office (SSIC) in recent years, the characteristics of consumer psychology can generally be summarized into the following categories:
1. Pragmatism.
The main consumer psychology characteristic of most consumers is utility. They expect that the products are easy to use, inexpensive and of good-quality. They do not deliberately pursue beautiful designs and novel styles. Consumer groups with such a practical mentality are mainly mature working class, housewives, and elderly. In response to this consumer psychology, the watch packaging box designs tend to be simple and no-frills.
2. Seeking Beauty.
Consumers who have sufficient incomes generally have a psychology for beauty. They pay more attention to the artistic appeals of commodities. Consumer in this group are mainly young people and intellectuals, of which women account for 75.3%. In terms of product categories, the packaging of jewelry, cosmetics, clothing, handicrafts and gifts needs to pay more attention to aesthetic value. As far the watch packaging is concerned, watch boxes for women should be well styled and decorated.
3. Seeking Differences.
The consumer group with a mentality of seeking differences are mainly young people under the age of 35. This type of consumer group believes that the style of products and packaging is extremely important. Be personalized, i.e., the shapes, colors, and graphics of the packaging are required to be more fashionable and avant-garde, while the use value and price of the goods are not their priority concern. In this consumer group, underage children account for a considerable proportion. For them, sometimes product packaging is more important than the product itself. Aiming at this group of consumer, which is a consuming power that you cannot afford to ignore, the watch packaging box design should highlight the "novelty" characteristics to meet his psychological needs of seeking differences.
4. Herd Psychology
Consumers with a herd mentality are happy to cater to popular trends or imitate celebrities. Extravagant publicity of fashion and celebrities nowadays helps breed such consumer psychology. To this end, the watch packaging box design should keep pace with the popular trend, or directly introduce the product image spokesperson that is popular among consumers to boost the trustworthiness of the product. For example, Hong Kong actor Louis Koo is the brand endorsement of Fiyta watches.
5. Pursuing Famous Brands
For consumers of wrist watches, no matter what kind of consumer group, there is a certain psychology of seeking famous brands. They value the brands of the watches and have a sense of trust and loyalty to well-known brands. When they can afford financially, they would purchase the aspired brands regardless of the high prices. Therefore, help establish a good brand image in the watch packaging design is also the key to the success of watch sales.
