Paraphrasing

December 3 2014

Package Size and Perceived Quality

This article was about a study done to decide whether a packages size affects the way a consumer views and judges the overall product. This article also goes into detail about if a packages size affects the overall price. For example, does the consumer relate smaller or bigger packages with a product being good or not. During this study, they used 112 people and used vitamin pills bottles as the packaging examples and then polled the consumers on their views of the packaging.

I personally relate bigger packages to being a bulk item, or something that is not name brand. And even when I see an item that is name brand, if it comes in a large container I am for some reason less likely to buy, even if the deal is better. During this study they used a small bottle of vitamin pills, and a larger bottle of vitamin pills and asked the people to rate and talk about how the perceive or each products quality depending on the size and shape of its packaging or bottle.

The result of this studied showed that even when presented with the same product in a similar container of different sizes, the consumer still was inclined to choose the smaller bottle and think the bigger bottle was inferior in some way. Through using five different studies they gathered accurate results on the topic. I think the results where a bit obvious by just thinking of how I show.

In my opinion this article was insightful, thought a little obvious. Consumers tend to relate a bigger product boxing with a bulk deal, or knock off brand items. However, this is not by coincidence and has be instilled in us for many years. When you go to Walmart you see it on the shelves. I think this is something as humans we have learned, and that if you are conscious of it you can take advantage. Many people miss out of great offers and deals by prejudging a product based on its appearance.

I feel that this topic also had a strong case study behind it, and that the use of the five different study topics helps prove the facts. However, I do think that 112 people was not a large enough sample number. Wither there being so many people in the world the only way to form a accurate result on the topic would be to poll as many people as possible. Even one-thousand wouldn’t be enough to form an accurate argument in my opinion. The saying one-in-a-million is around for a reason.

I found the part of the article that showed how size effects quality judgment, and pricing also effects the quality judgment of a product. I feel both of these are true, and as stated before you see them every day. In the grocery store you tend to buy the more expensive soups and vegetables, in the shoe store you tend to gravitate towards name brand like Nike, it is all about perception and these marketing experts know this.

Marketing experts can use this to their advantage in many ways. For example this proves that if you want your product to feel and appear high quality, you must streamline the product into as small a package you are conveniently given the space. This can also be used in reverse, and if a company just wants to mass produce a product they can give it a more basic appearance and increase the product size. The pricing part of this is seen all over when you compare regular retail prices to that of malls. The price of items in the mall is usually marginally higher, giving people the feeling that the product is glamourous and of higher quality.