Product Packaging Color and Marketing

Foreword

From the moment one was born, he had the ability to perceive color and likes and dislikes, which is why baby products are usually colorful because it is an instinct for people. The purpose of this paper is not to explore the causes and root causes of this instinct, but to initially study the influence of color on human psychological factors, and the application of this effect in actual production—what is the color of product packaging has to consumers' psychology? influences.

Color seems to be the most active factor in visual communication. People accept information mostly through vision. Therefore, to make their products attract the attention of consumers and come to the fore, it is essential that products have distinct visual characteristics from other products—that is, the design and use of colors.

1. An Analysis of the Status Quo of the Relationship between Domestic Packaging Color and Marketing

1.1 Related concepts

1.1.1 Color emotions and meanings

Color is a physical phenomenon, but people can feel emotion from it. The direct psychological effect of color comes from the direct influence of the physical light of color on human physiology. For example, in a red environment, people have faster pulse and emotional impulses; in a blue environment, the pulse is slow and emotions are calm. The brainwaves are alert to the reaction to red, and the response to blue is to relax, so most dance halls and bars use red light, while hospitals are mostly blue. The material impression of color is generally produced by two colors, cold and warm. The wavelengths of red, orange, and yellow light are reminiscent of the sun, and there is a warm feeling; the short purple, blue, and green light has a cold feeling. Apart from the obvious psychological differences between the warm and cold colors, the changes in the lightness and solid colors of the colors also give the impression of soft and hard colors. The pale light colors make people feel soft and the dark solid colors have a strong feeling.

People live in the world of color for a long time and have accumulated many visual experiences. Once the visual experience echoes the external color stimulus, it will cause some emotions. I believe that people have had this kind of experience, that is, when grass green and yellow or pink match, it will cause a kind of happy emotion, because the combination will make us think of a beautiful natural experience.

1.1.2 Hue Emotions and Implications

A packaging design consists of several colors, of which the dominant color forms the hue of the package. Bright colors have high color purity, lively and lively images, and are mostly used for food and children's products; mild colors have low color purity and contrast, giving people a romantic, elegant, dignified and noble sense. They are used in cosmetics and high grades. Gifts and some medical supplies are packaged; the clear colors are mostly cool or black and white, giving people a sense of purity and freedom. They are mostly used for cultural and education supplies, chemicals, and some tobacco and wine packaging; metal-tone packaging is mostly used for high-end products. Commodity packaging, which is the highest in all metallic colors, is worth [11], symbolizing wealth, power, and status.

1.2. Influence of color on human psychology

The memory and understanding that people obtain in their natural lives constitute the image color of the goods. The brown, orange, pink, and purple grapes are named after the plants, and silver, black, copper, and bronze are named after the metal. These image colors are linked to the content of the merchandise and it is easy to achieve the purpose of identifying the merchandise.

The reality of color design is a psychological process, which creates a sense of pleasure through the interweaving and merging of representational movements, abstract thoughts, and emotional activities. Experiments show that color has a close relationship with people's feelings. A color research institute has tried and tested the same kind of coffee in yellow, red and green cups for people to taste. The result is that the coffee in the yellow cup feels tasteless; the coffee in the green cup feels sour; red The coffee in the cup feels sweet and beautiful. Experiments have shown that "sweetness" is easily associated with yellow, white and pink, "sour" is easy to think of green, "bitterness" is associated with brown, gray and black, "salty" is associated with cyan and blue.

The psychology language of packaging color includes many fields such as sociology, psychology, and aesthetics. It involves all aspects of people's lives and life experiences.

1.3 Analysis of Domestic Packaging Color and Marketing Relationship

1. 3. 1 Progress in domestic packaging

Many Chinese companies have realized the effect of color on human psychology and the huge impact on marketing, and have begun to focus on the color exploration of product packaging.

Take tea as an example. In order to occupy a place in the fiercely competitive international market, Chinese tea producers have improved the packaging of tea and made the products more attractive. Green tea uses cool colors such as green and blue to give people a feeling of calmness and refreshment; black tea uses calm, saturated warm colors, which gives people a rich and lustrous association; tea uses color to talk and soften; tea uses color to taste simple ,calm.

1. 3. 2 Insufficient domestic packaging

Compared with the importance of foreign companies' feedback on market feedback, Chinese companies still have a huge gap. They ignore the follow-up investigation after the products are put into the market. This neglect is extremely unfavorable for the long-term development of the company.

Or take tea as an example. The domestic tea packaging is mostly Chinese landscape painting. The use of ink painting in traditional tea packaging is indeed elegant, but in areas where ethnic minorities live together are not as popular as those full of ethnic colors. Therefore, designers can not subjectively judge what kind of colors consumers will like, but should deepen their lives to investigate and research, do a good job of investigating products that have already been put into the market, timely grasp the feedback of consumers, and conduct future design work. Improve.

2. An Analysis of the Status Quo of the Relationship between Foreign Packaging Colors and Marketing

2.1 The function of color in the marketing process

2.1.1 Color Marketing Function

According to analysis, the visual sense of human beings observes the object. In the first 20 seconds, the color accounts for 80%, and the modeling accounts for 20%; after two minutes, the color accounts for 60% and the modeling accounts for 40%; after five minutes, each accounted for half. Subsequently, the impression of color persists in human visual memory. Therefore, the main color of good packaging will induce consumers to use color-consistent product packaging to associate with the exquisiteness of the product and thus create a desire to purchase. This is the basic principle of the color marketing function.

2.1.2 color classification function

Color has the function of dividing files in commodity pricing. This feature is often used in the same brand of products. For example, purple and gold are often used to identify high-end products, and the packaging prices of other colors are generally low. If the color segmentation function is well utilized, it can bring great convenience to manufacturers and merchants. When consumers purchase goods, they can quickly distinguish the kind of goods they want to buy in the same brand series.

2.2 Analysis of the Status Quo of the Relationship between Foreign Packaging Colors and Marketing

In international marketing, many foreign companies are aware of the significance of packaging colors in the marketing process, but the factors of cultural differences are more important in the design process, that is, to notice the taboos and likes and dislikes in other cultures. This difference often determines the outcome.

Colgate Company had ever made a comeback. After Colgate toothpaste entered the Japanese market, it competed fiercely with Japanese lion toothpaste, but soon the market share plummeted from 1% to 1%. What are the reasons? Colgate and Lion's packaging are red and white. The difference is that Colgate is dominated by red, white by red, and lion is white by red. However, Japanese consumers prefer white. In Japanese dictionaries, there are 271 words with “white” and 74 words with “red”. The lion toothpaste defeated its competitors with color.

The scientific use of color in pharmaceutical packaging will bring a lot of convenience to both doctors and patients, and it will also bring huge profits and international reputation to pharmaceutical manufacturers.

According to China's "Drug Packaging Management Regulations", drug packaging "must reflect the characteristics of drugs in vivid colors." Reasonable use of color in different environments can cause people's emotional changes. The conclusions reached by scientists and psychologists are:

Red: stimulates and stimulates the nervous system, which can increase the adrenal secretion and accelerate blood circulation.

Orange: induces appetite, helps calcium absorption, help restore and maintain health.

Yellow: Stimulates the nervous and digestive system and enhances logical thinking.

Green: beneficial to the digestive system, promote body balance can play a sedative effect, inhibit dizziness, fatigue and negative emotions, can regulate and improve the body function.

Blue: Lowering the pulse, adjusting the balance in the body, and eliminating tension can help relieve headaches, dizziness, and insomnia.

Indigo: Harmonic muscles reduce or stop bleeding, affecting audio-visual, olfactory sensations, and reduce the nerve's sensitivity to pain.

Purple: Repressive effects on the motor, lymphatic, and cardiac systems can be used to maintain potassium balance in the body and make people feel quiet and caring.

Here the color is no longer simply with emotional characteristics, and is associated with pathology, with pharmacological functions. Japan's Apson Pharmaceuticals exports pharmaceuticals to more than 160 countries. In order to establish its product image, it has redesigned the original color of pharmaceutical packaging, applied different color patches according to different diseases, and determined a color that is more consistent with drugs. If the severely ill drug is orange, the reproductive system drug is pink. Why do not use serious red drugs and scarlet red and orange it? From the perspective of the sense of color, the order from heavy to light is: red, red, and orange; from the perspective of color, the order is still red, red, and orange. From the perspective of color space, the brighter the color, the more It is cheerful and cheerful. The brighter the color is, the stronger the visual nerve stimulation of human beings. The more invigorating the human spirit, it is undoubtedly suitable for seriously ill patients. In addition, pink is a special color for the reproductive system drugs, because pink is more similar to flesh than flesh, easy to produce associations from the skin to the inner soft tissue. The application of the above-mentioned color blocks is a scientific formula obtained after comparing and analyzing the same color, and accurately expresses the attributes of the drugs. After the product was put into the market, Upson Company quickly rose to become a world-renowned enterprise at one stroke. This is inseparable from the adoption of scientific and reasonable colors.

Well-known companies also focus on color research before the product is put into the market. For example, the famous chocolate brand M&M's once set off a "color selection" around the world, asking consumers in 78 countries to vote for a color from purple, pink and light green as a new coat of chocolate beans. According to a long-term follow-up survey, the popularity of chocolate beans of various colors was found to be 30% for brown, 20% for red and yellow, and 10% for orange, green and blue. Therefore, M&M's bags of chocolate beans are loaded in this ratio, and they are treated equally regardless of large bags. This will not only help the product enjoy long-term market share, but also help companies establish a good image and win the trust of consumers.

summary

Through the above discussion, the key role of color in the marketing process has been clear. The colors in the product package can make consumers feel trust in the product. Whether or not there is trust in the quality of a product is often an important factor in whether a consumer purchases a product. When people purchase a product, they first look at the appearance of the product to determine the reliability of the product. At this time, the color shows its importance, and the color packaging of the product is required to enable consumers to have a psychological trust and resonance with the product according to its own characteristics. Facing the examples of successes and failures at home and abroad, we must not only realize the great power of color, but also invest in careful investigation and research.

Therefore, the definition of packaging color design should be expanded, not only the design of the product development stage, but also should be extended to the product after the market tracking research. Now that we have realized the effect of color on product marketing, we will put it into action.

Author: Shanghai Jiaotong University, Zhu decided to

Reprinted from: Art and Design