Overpackaging Psychology Causes from Business to Consumer

The original meaning of “degree” is a measure of scale, which means “appropriate limit”. This limit is the limit of a certain range. It focuses on the boundary that the objective thing itself has been recognized and accepted. China's packaging industry has just emerged from the past, "poor packaging, silly black and white," out of the embarrassment, inadvertently fell into the "over-packaging" misunderstanding.

There are many missions for packaging, such as protecting goods, storing goods, communicating information about goods and businesses, beautifying goods, promoting sales, and so on. However, when the goods arrive at the consumer's terminal, packaging has basically fulfilled its mission, and most of them cannot escape the destiny of waste. Then, what is the boundary that the packaging itself has been recognized and accepted? What is “excessive”? Overpacking is a relatively moderate packaging, which means that the packaging of the product is too complicated or extravagant and gorgeous. It consumes a large amount of valuable resources and even causes environmental pollution. This trend has become more intense in the post-industrial era and has caused variation in packaging. Why does “over-packaging” emerge in modern society? The author wants to discuss some of the psychological causes of merchants, designers, and consumers.

A business: defeating peers, more to capture the consumer's "eyeball" or "attention"

Today, large distributors gradually become intermediate consumers, and large supermarkets have mushroomed and spread all over the corner. On large shelves, there are a variety of goods. When people are shopping, they are in direct contact with the goods. There are many brands for any kind of products. How to highlight themselves in the numerous competitors of the same category and hold consumers' eyes is very important. This is also the present day. The "attention economy" or "eyeball economy" that we constantly emphasize. Gaining the attention of consumers is the beginning of success. It can even be said to be half of success. At this time, packaging became a silent salesman, and the importance of packaging design is also self-evident.

Manufacturers and merchants have therefore pushed packaging design to an unprecedented position. Based on the psychology of winning consumers' “pampering”, the business is “better”. As a result, businesses do not hesitate to pay high packaging design costs to ensure that the goods are eye-catching, novel, and rack their brains to do "big" and "strong". However, the gorgeous packaging has caused an astonishing disparity between the selling price and the cost of the product, especially for consumer goods and accessories. These packages have dazzling appearance, high-grade structural materials, complex structural layers, and huge space volumes. Such a packaging design on the one hand greatly increases the sales price of goods, on the other hand extremely consumes resources, but this "excessive" "deterrence" is still the consumer pays the bill, after "beads", this "椟"It is like a chicken rib" to use it, but it is a pity to abandon it."

Two designers: show off their talents and play tricks

From the motivation of the packaging designer's own behavior, it is also possible to explore the root causes of excessive packaging. The designer hopes to have more exhibition space and more opportunities to show talents. He hopes to use the design to apply more of his own characteristics and elements. However, once the proper “degree” is not well understood, he will slide toward “excessive packaging”. Beautiful traps. Some packaging designers often emphasize the independent value of the packaging itself. On the surface, it seems undeniable because packaging can truly demonstrate the noble qualities of the designer and profound cultural foundation. At the same time, the successful packaging also has rich national connotations, embodies the history of a nation, or has a strong sense of the times and modern charm. The designer's values, style, taste, and aeolian are recognized and appreciated by consumers, which undoubtedly enhances the sense of achievement of the designer. Therefore, designers often make every effort to make the packaging beautiful, and make high demands on all elements of the packaging (including the concept of molding, decoration, and construction, etc.), which goes beyond the mission of the packaging, thus ignoring the necessity of packaging. The fact of becoming a waste.

Beauty and ugliness are relatively speaking. In life, we often find that the difference between beauty and ugliness is only one line or a delicate interval. For example, moon cake packaging with a price of more than 1,000 yuan is beautiful from the standpoint of appearance, but it is pregnant with the profits of businesses, and it is often used as an intermediary for corruption to create bureaucratic habits and unhealthy practices, bringing about unnecessary waste of resources and serious environmental pollution. These are the "ugliness" we hate. It is only beautiful when the packaging of external symbols is symmetry with the inner product. Designers crossed this inner scale, only looking at the psychology of showing off and satisfying themselves, will fall into the quagmire of "over-packaging." Luxury packaging and poor quality goods not only injure the consumers. In a deep sense, it is also a failure of the designers, or “doing a job for the tiger”, and the business “worrying about the evil”.

Three consumers: pursuing fashion and satisfying vanity

Gorgeous and expensive packaging has increased the burden on consumers. Consumers are also aware that why are they still rushing?

In today’s era, with the continuous strengthening of market mechanisms, “as the market forces continue to increase, the share of economic benefits that those people earning at the top of the economy will likely continue to grow rapidly. With income With the further development of equality, we can expect that there will be more and more resources in the world for the production of luxury consumer goods."[1] Luxury consumer goods, especially high-end packaging gifts, and their luxurious packaging, Tempt the people for consumption, and engage in people’s desire to pursue fashion tastes while satisfying both the giver and the recipient’s vanity.

We have found that people’s satisfaction with life is largely based on relative living standards. In today's consumer society, the measure of the standard of living is the "occupation of objects." In past societies, people were divided into classes by class. Today, people have re-classified all social strata through their possession.

“Today, around us, there is an amazing consumption and abundance that consists of ever-increasing things, services, and material wealth. It constitutes a fundamental change in the human natural environment. Properly, wealthy People are no longer surrounded by people as they were in the past, but surrounded by things.”[2] Marx also foresaw a way of human alienation, that is, “materialization”—man created by it. Controlled by things, confused the mind.

Today's chewing on our feet is still very profound. In order to highlight their noble social status, people must purchase high-end products, while high-end products should be equipped with high-standard packaging, which seems to be beyond reproach. Packaging is the first information that people get when they come into contact with a product. This information is the first important factor that contributes to consumers' actions. At this time, the consumers’ psychological activity is: whether the packaged product can attract envious eyes and whether it meets the Whether his status as a class can satisfy his desire for consumption in this area? Therefore, consumer behavior itself is complicated and far exceeds the purchasing behavior. Consumption must not only meet the needs of the material but also meet the psychological needs. Therefore, "identity consumption" and "symbolic consumption" arise spontaneously. Commodities also transcend their own "property attributes" and become affordable identities and symbols.

Regardless of whether it is economically, psychologically or materially, the consumption of others will have an impact on one’s own consumer psychology and consumer behavior. This effect may be obvious and may be subconscious and irrational. Each person's consumer behavior is not isolated, it may become the standard for others to make important choices. This is the chain effect of consumer behavior. The extremely exquisitely packaged products have a strong temptation, while the vanity psychology aggravates the pursuit of flashy.

The strong concern for “relative situation” has affected our consumption patterns. People’s desire to enter the high-level psychology is particularly strong in this era. It seems to be less difficult to achieve through consumption. Relatively speaking, the social class of slave society and feudal society It seems insurmountable. Rough packaging products, although their function is complete, but it can not meet the psychological needs of consumers, packaging beautiful products is the consumer's glory, so conspicuous consumption in popular today is not difficult to understand.

In the final analysis, businesses and designers do no better, and ultimately the consumer choice behavior is still consumers. People always say that “China is a state of etiquette” and that face is extremely important. This is especially manifested in gifts. In the eyes of the Chinese, both the face of the giver and the face of the recipient are reflected through gifts. Recipients also use packaging to determine their position in the minds of the gift giver to measure their relationship with each other, and further actions are based on this. It can be seen that the profound origins of Chinese face culture and the irrational gift-consuming behavior of “buyers don’t use, users don’t buy” and the widespread popularity of corruption have made the wind of this package more intensified.

In today’s commercial society, false substitutes for truth, creations for nature, and deliberate decoration of the subject, all of which are numerous. Not only in the industrial sector, but also in the financial sector, academia, and performing arts. Modest, normal packaging is a promotional tool and aesthetic transmission, and it is based on genuine value. If they are filled with less, confusedly, shoddy, or different from inside and outside, besides being corrupted, then the packaging exceeds its specific limits and becomes a purely commercial tactic that constitutes fraud to consumers. Faced with this false and over-packaging behavior, as long as consumers polish their eyes and pierce its diorama, no matter how luxurious it is, or how fancy it is to package, its conspiracy will not succeed.

From merchants, designers to consumers, their respective motives come together to form a chain that fits each other. However, we can see that the phenomena of “individual pride and group tragedy” that are widespread in the animal kingdom also exist in human society.

Faced with excessive packaging, how should we respond? First, the state should eliminate the mechanism of breeding corruption and dilute the social atmosphere of extravagant consumption. At the same time, it is necessary to change the value orientation of both companies and consumers, and regard vanity psychology and infavoring habits as bad habits. Designers should use green packaging design techniques to improve the quality of packaging design, grasp the "scale" of packaging design, adhere to a designer's ethical conduct, and design works that are both environmentally friendly and elegant.

There are mainly three types of successful control methods for overpacking in foreign countries: The first type is standard control, which sets limits on the volume of the package, the gap between the packaged goods and the goods, the number of packaging layers, the ratio between the packaging cost and the value of the goods. standard. The second type is economic control, which imposes a tax on non-paper-based packaging and packaging that does not meet the recycling requirements. At the same time, through the measurement of garbage charges, consumers are guided to choose simple packaging. The third category is to increase the producer's responsibility and stipulate that the producer of goods is responsible for the recovery of the packaging of goods. Usually, a deposit system can be used to entrust relevant commercial organizations to recycle the packaging. In order to facilitate recycling, producers will actively choose package designs that use less materials and are easy to recycle. With these initiatives, we may be able to learn from and learn from them.

Of course, Rome was not built in a day. The road to packaging and the ecological road will not be accomplished overnight. At present, we are pleased to see that various industry associations, national legislatures, and some local governments in China are working hard to do this. The good prospects of curbing excessive packaging are not far off.

Source: Journal of Zhuzhou Teachers College