A Study Regarding the Relationship between the Consumer Expectations Regarding Packaging and Brand Awareness

Factors such as changing life styles, consumers being more conscious and competition increasing in both global and national domain require brands to seek success in the market by adding new and diversified characteristics to their products. In this context, packaging, which adds value to the product and moreover, presents the product on the shelves and is a part of the product and the brand, is a subject that the brands and the consumers increasingly focus on. Packaging is crucial in the marketing of similar products. Thus, it bears a lot of responsibility. Packaging reaches both available and potential consumers at the most essential stage like decision-making and satisfies the expectations of the consumers, such as “information seeking, ease of handling and usage, brand comparison, brand image and awareness, environment protection, health insurance, innovation opportunity, promotion, etc.” Packaging is situated in an important position in reaching the consumer, being imprinted on people’s mind and creating brand awareness. Due to the fact that packaging is the initial attraction factor in points of purchase, it is one of the most important aspects of the brand and it helps to increase the brand value by creating brand awareness. Deriving from this notion, this study analyzes the relationship between the consumer expectations regarding packaging and brand awareness with the help of a survey. For the survey, consumers who are over 18 years old and shop from the food retail stores are interviewed face to face in Istanbul, Turkey on August 2015 and convenience sampling method has been used. Factor analysis was applied to the data which were obtained from the survey. In this study, the relationship between the consumer expectations regarding packaging and brand awareness is examined by performing a regression analysis. It is hoped that the study results will be a guideway for the corporations that seek to increase brand awareness and it is believed that this will increase the awareness level, emphasizing the importance of packaging.