Influence of convenience goods package on consumer buying behaviour : an international student's perspective

Abstract

The role of packaging has changed with the move to self-service retail formats. Marketers have transformed packaging to become one of the major promoting tools of products, which in turn gets the attention of potential customers and communicate the brand value to the target market. Thus, there is a necessity to explore packaging and its elements in more detail, in order to understand which of these elements are the most important factors influencing the consumer’s purchase decision. This study seeks to reveal the influence of visual and verbal packaging elements on international students buying decision of convenience goods specifically fruit juice which is popular among students. A quantitative, non-probability research approach was employed and convenience sampling was used to identify and select study participants constituting 397 students. In the study the visual and verbal elements are both found to influence consumer buying behaviour. The visual elements that influence consumer buying behaviour are colour, graphics and packaging technology. The verbal elements that have an influence on consumer buying behaviour for convenience goods are label information and brand name. The factor analysis shows that the most important factors during buying decisions are label information, brand name, graphics, colour and technology. The regression analysis reveal a significant relationship between consumer buying behaviour and seven predictor variables; colour, graphics, packaging technology, label information, brand name, level of involvement and time-pressure. The results also reveal that when consumers are under time-pressure, they consider visual elements when they make their purchase decisions. On the other hand, the consumers consider verbal elements when they are not under time-pressure. The results also show that consumers regard convenience goods as low involvement products. Thus it is the duty of marketers to utilise packaging as a marketing tool and weapon against competitors. This study recommends that marketers must consider all packaging elements when designing a package because all packaging elements are significant in drawing interest and attention of consumers. If these elements are properly combined the package will be more attractive and attention-grabbing.