August 2025 | Package Design Research

How to Redesign a Package for an Established Brand

The market is changing, and competitors are changing, and the time has come to redesign the package for that old established brand. What are the keys to using research to guide the development of a new package design?

Do Basic Research

Before the package designers go to work, do some basic research: How do consumers shop the category? How much time do they spend in front of the display? How many shoppers read the details on the label? What colors and patterns help consumers recognize the brand? What messages on the package help differentiate the brand from its competitors? Depth interviews are typically the best way to answer these foundational questions and to reveal unknown tidbits of knowledge that might lead to a better package design. In addition to depth interviews, it's wise to…

1. Review any recent research related to the current or proposed package redesign.
2. Observe or video tape consumers shopping the product category in stores.
3. Find out how the package is used in the home. Does it linger as an advertising billboard, or is the package immediately discarded?
4. Explore what role the package design will play in online sales, if applicable.

All of these little details, once fully understood, can help the brand team set clear and relevant goals for the new package design. Once the design goals are set, the package designers are ready to go to work.

The Creative Funnel

After reviewing the goals and objectives from the Brand Team, package designers will typically create a large number of rough designs—anywhere from 20 to 30 or more early-stage designs.

Screening Early Stage Package Designs

Typically, this screening is done via online surveys. A sample of 200 to 300 target-audience consumers would see every one of the new designs in randomized order, and answer a few questions about each one, such as:

• Attention value
• Purchase interest
• Perceived uniqueness
• Fit with the brand

The results of these questions are combined into a scoring model so that all of the package designs can be ranked from best to worst. The goal of the model is to identify the four or five “better” designs. An alternate method is to use Max-Diff to rank the rough package designs.

Mid-Stage Research

The winners of the Early Stage Screening are put through another round of research that reduces the number of designs again, and diagnostic feedback is provided to help improve the surviving designs. Mid-Stage research can be either qualitative or quantitative, or both.

Depth Interviews: The goal of this qualitative research is to identify the better package designs and improve on the designs. Every little detail of each design would be explored in one-on-one depth interviews, searching for any little tweaks that could improve consumer reactions to the package designs. Qualitative research provides good diagnostic information and detailed package-design improvement guidelines. However, there is some risk of contamination and bias from design to design learning, since respondents see all the 4 to 6 designs.

Monadic Survey: At this stage any survey-based research would be monadic, since that approach provides the best diagnostics (each respondent would only see and evaluate one package design). Sample sizes would typically be 100 to 150 target-market consumers per package design.

• Attention value
• Purchase intent
• Perceived uniqueness
• Open-ended diagnostics

Monadic surveys (plus the depth interviews) would help reduce the number of package designs down to the two or three best designs.

Final Package-Design Testing

The final step is to take each of the top 2 or 3 designs identified in earlier stages of research and test each design against a constant set of primary competitive packages. Each test package is placed in a simulated display, similar to a display the consumer might see in a typical store. Each package design is tested among a representative sample of target-market consumers. At this stage, sample sizes could range from 300 to 500 consumers per package design. The most important questions are:

• Attention value
• Purchase intent
• Purchase frequency
• Expected market share
• Package design uniqueness
• Brand fit
• Image projected
• Pricing expectations
• Diagnostic open-ended questions

Final Thoughts

In the final evaluation of new package designs for an established brand, great care must be taken to ensure that the new package design is not so radical as to break “continuity” with existing consumers. The greater a brand’s market share, the greater the risks associated with a radical change in package design.

If a brand has a tiny market share, the risks of a new package design are much lower. Any change in package colors or color schemes are always risky, as consumers look for those visual cues when they are at the store shelf, and they could overlook the brand if the package colors change too much. If a package redesign is supported with heavy advertising, the risks of a new package design are reduced. Lastly, any changes in package design might affect the way consumers think about or perceive the product inside the package, so additional types of research (product testing, for example) might be required. If the new package negatively affects perceptions of the product, then you should go back to the drawing board and start over.

Jerry W. Thomas

CEO

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Bonnie Janzen

President

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Felicia Rogers

Corporate Executive Vice President

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