The Effect of Branding on Consumer Choice

Branding on packaging acts as an important cue to guide consumer choice in the retail environment. From a psychological perspective, branding on packaging serves two important purposes, crucial to decision making: 1) It guides consumersʼ attention, drawing attention to certain brands. 2) It allows consumers to recognise and find familiar brands. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the impact branding has on these processes, and therefore consumer choice. The role of branding was examined in three specific areas: i. The impact of reduced branding on consumer choice. When branding on packaging is reduced, how does this influence decision making? ii. The impact of increased non-branded information on consumer choice. What effect does non-branded information, such as nutritional information, have on decisions? iii. The impact of copycat branding on consumer choice. When a brand is perceptually similar to another, well established brand, how does this effect decision making? In order to answer these questions, eye tracking and visual search tasks were employed to measure attention and recognition, in a scientifically validated and rigorous manner. Key findings are described below: i. The impact of reduced branding on consumer choice The results demonstrated that reducing the branding on packaging can influence consumer behaviour, by reducing attention to and recognition of certain brands. Strong evidence from the recognition data suggested that reducing the size of a logo on packaging impairs consumersʼ ability to recognise and find a brand they are looking for. This effect was particularly pronounced when the changes to the logo size are large. ii. The impact of increased non-branded information on consumer choice. Both the eye tracking and recognition data provided some tentative evidence that increasing the size of nutritional labels displayed on packaging may influence consumer behaviour, by increasing attention to but reducing recognition of certain brands. However, the observed effects were not statistically reliable, indicating that the impact of nutritional information may not be significant. iii. The impact of copycat branding on consumer choice. Strong evidence from the recognition data suggested that copycat branding can influence consumer choice; the results demonstrated the impact of perceptually similar (copycat) brands on an established brand. In cases where an established brand was displayed alongside a copycat supermarket brand, participants were slower and more inaccurate in identifying the established brand. This was compared to cases where the established brand was displayed alongside a non-copy supermarket brand. These robust results suggest …