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Multisensory Product Packaging: An Introduction

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Multisensory Packaging

Abstract

Packaging provides the means of protecting, transporting, and conserving the product that happens to be contained within. Nowadays, packaging also constitutes a powerful brand element, one that can be used to convey information, create value, persuade the consumer, modulate their behaviour. In this chapter, we introduce the topic and present packaging as a multisensory device capable of transforming the consumer’s experience. We highlight the growing interest from both academic researchers and marketing professionals in packaging experiences that have been crafted to optimize the way packaging looks, sounds, feels, and even, in some cases, the way that it smells and/or tastes too. Importantly, we discuss how such interest is moving from the consideration of the impact of just a single sense at a time to a growing understanding that ultimately it is their interaction (i.e., the multisensory element) that is key to driving the consumer response. Finally, we provide a brief overview of the chapters included in this volume, highlighting what we see as their key contribution to the emerging field of multisensory packaging design.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    According to the 2018 Merriam-Webster dictionary, packaging is defined as a ‘material used to enclose or contain something’. Importantly, however, in the context of marketing and branding, the meaning(s) of packaging go beyond enclosing and containing to cover some additional functional and aesthetic purposes such as: identifying the brand, providing descriptive information, persuading the consumer, helping product consumption, and facilitating transportation, protection, and storage (see Keller, 2013).

  2. 2.

    Most research understandably focuses on the front-facing side of product packaging.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the following for reviewing various of the chapters in this volume: Tsutomu Sunaga (Waseda University, Japan), Jasper Machiels (Kiel University, Germany), Georgiana Juravle (Lyon Neuroscience Research Center, France), Salvador Soto-Franco (University of Barcelona, Spain), Abhishek Pathak (Dundee University, Scotland), Francis McGlone (Liverpool John Moores University, UK), Thomas Van Rompay and Anna Fenko (Twente University, The Netherlands), Olivia Petit (Kedge Business School, France), Janice Wang and Gregory Simmonds (University of Oxford, UK), Andy Woods (UK), Felipe Reinoso-Carvalho (Universidad de los Andes, Colombia), and Frédéric Basso (London School of Economics and Political Science).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Marketing, BI Norwegian Business School, Oslo, Norway

    Carlos Velasco

  2. Crossmodal Research Laboratory, Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Charles Spence

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  1. Carlos Velasco
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Correspondence to Carlos Velasco .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Marketing BI Norwegian Business School, Oslo, Norway

    Carlos Velasco

  2. Crossmodal Research Laboratory Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Charles Spence

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Velasco, C., Spence, C. (2019). Multisensory Product Packaging: An Introduction. In: Velasco, C., Spence, C. (eds) Multisensory Packaging. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94977-2_1

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