A Study of the Attentional Effects of Packaging Cues of Ready to Eat Food Products on the Buying Behavior of Consumers of Selected Cities of Gujarat

Abstract

All human actions have one of these seven causes Chance, Nature, Compulsion, Habit, Reason, Passion and Desire. As a human being the major cause to take over this research was Reason. The reason is to accomplish my task, aim and motive of enhancing the domain of my knowledge and to know more about the Food packaging Industry.India is the world s second largest producer of food next to China and has potential of being the biggest with food and agriculture sector. The Food Processing industry is the 5th largest industry in India in terms of production, consumption, export and expected growth. Among the various sectors of Food Processing industry, ready to eat food product industry is growing at the fastest pace of 30 % p.a. There are nearly 100 international, national and local players already operating in industry and equal numbers of players are likely to enter in the market in coming years due to its huge growth potential. Ready to eat food products being product of low involvement category, a little differentiation exists among the products produced by various players of the industry so to differentiate their products companies make use of various marketing tools.One of the most prominent tools used in the industry is packaging. The companies make use of various packaging elements to differentiate their products This study was undertaken to analyze the influence of various packaging elements of ready to eat food products on the product evaluation, perceptions, preferences and buying behavior of consumers of selected cities of Gujarat. In the study impact of eight different packaging elements was analyzed .The various different packaging elements whose impact was analyzed are : (a) Front of Package nutritional labels like cholesterol free label and sugar free label (b) Package colors like sparkling color and ordinary color (c) Package shapes like round shape, rectangular shape, angular shapes etc. (d) Position of visual and verbal elements at different places on the Package (e) Number of product units displayed.