Communication research
Branding research
Retail & Shopper research
Usability Research
My mouth is already watering just thinking about it. The chocolate raisins from the Dutch supermarket Albert Heijn. Probably not the most sugar-friendly thing I can eat, but oh so delicious?
Recently, I noticed something about their packaging. Besides being conveniently resealable now, there's an interesting text on it: “now 15% less plastic”.
You'd think that's great. But the psychologist in me knew this isn't so clever from the marketers at the Albert Heijn.
This relates to the ‘Boomerang Effect’.
We encountered this effect recently when we researched a product from the vegetable section. The healthier alternative to my craving for choco-raisins; the sweet orange mini peppers.
What did we learn from that research?
Vitapep - the grower of these peppers - wanted to switch to more environmentally friendly packaging. Where you currently find the sweet peppers in a plastic bucket, they wanted to know if a more sustainable alternative would also provide a better feeling.
Specifically, they wanted to know if a cardboard package or a bucket made of recycled plastic (indicated via a print) would work better.
Of course, you can ask a consumer which packaging they find more sustainable. But as we repeatedly see in science, consumers often give socially desirable answers in surveys. And to top it off, we also see that consumers don't do what they say, and don't say what they do.
That's why we used the Implicit Association Test developed at Harvard for this. It gives you a very precise insight into which packaging is most associated with ‘sustainability’.
Recycled plastic sustainable?
The most surprising insight? The research showed that recycled plastic is considered less sustainable than a bucket without this label. In this case about the most sustainable and attractive packaging you can read more about it.
Although rationally counterintuitive, this is a well-known phenomenon in consumer psychology literature: when you emphasise in communication that a negative point is not or less present, the consumer becomes more aware of the existence of this negative trait.
This results in a boomerang effect where the consumer perceives a package as even less environmentally friendly.
This effect also naturally occurs when reading the packaging of the chocolate-covered raisins. Emphasising that the packaging contains less plastic makes us look at the packaging with a critical sustainability lens.
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Elke verpakking is vroeg of laat toe aan een nieuw likje verf. Je wilt met die nieuwe verpakking natuurlijk meer aandacht grijpen en vaker in het winkelmandje terechtkomen. Echter, soms gaat het mis. Hoe voorkom je Redesign Rampen? In dit webinar krijg je exact inzicht in welke psychologische factoren een redesign maken of breken.
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Suddenly, the consumer is not only focused on the prospect of delicious snacking, but the thought of plastic pollution also spontaneously arises.
And this thought then ensures that the raisins end up in the shopping basket a little less often.
A Paradoxical Lesson
The paradoxical lesson here is that you should certainly be working on reducing plastic waste. But you shouldn't rub this fact in the consumer's face.
Or, of course, because every package you don't sell due to this also means less waste?
Want to learn more about packaging psychology and neuromarketing?
A sustainability claim (or omitting it) is one of the many factors that determine the effectiveness of packaging.
In the Neuromarketing Retail Training by Unravel Academy a full lesson is dedicated to the psychological effects of product and packaging (lesson 5). Here you learn all the scientific insights about what makes a product successful.
Additionally, it is possible to conduct neuromarketing packaging research at Unravel Research. Here, based on brain activity and eye tracking, we determine whether the design of your packaging (as a redesign or introduction) will lead to success or not.
