If you didn't put as much care into the design and quality printing of the packaging as you did your outside-the-store marketing campaign, there's a good chance the customer will put the product back on the shelf. And for the person just browsing and not even aware of your marketing campaign, you've lost any chance of someone considering your product unless the packaging projects a compelling invitation to take a second look, and under closer inspection, convinces the shopper that yours is a quality product worth buying.
Marketing always attempts to reach consumers where they are, but product packaging is the only market medium that targets a consumer at a point when they're ready to buy - in the store - and who have already shown an interest in your type of product by walking down the aisle where it's being sold. It could be the aisle that sells lawn and garden items, cereal, pasta, home decorations, power tools, pretty much anything that comes in a package. Even if the product itself is on display, a shopper will check the box to read more details, see images of it in action, find out what it's made of or where it's made.
If the package looks cheap, poorly designed, or shows bad quality in printing, that impression the packaging makes carries over to the product itself in the consumer's mind.
One message in marketing and packaging
Packaging is not separate from marketing. Packaging is marketing, and needs to carry over the same colors and designs you use in your advertising campaign, and on websites, mobile devices and handout brochures, even though each media platform has its own set of design criteria. You don't want the colors on your packaging to be "close enough" to the colors you use elsewhere. Your printer should be expert in packaging and labeling to produce colors true to your marketing design elements.
Yet the color and design must still set it apart from its competitors on the shelf and draw attention from consumers. Packaging designed after the rest of marketing and advertising designs are approved could give you something that works well on a mobile device, but not at all on a store shelf. When packaging is designed as part of a marketing campaign, you may need to adjust for each medium, but key elements and a coherent design theme come through clearly in all of them.
Impulse Buying
Packaging and labeling may be the only message that reaches a consumer. A casual shopper without a list is out to pick up just a few things, and does not see the shopping trip as a mission to be completed as efficiently and economically as possible. On this trip, the consumer is open to cruising the aisles to find anything else he may need - or want.
Is the package for your product waiting for this consumer, set to reel him in? Maybe an advertising campaign reached this consumer, but not enough to drive him to the store. But now that he sees your package, does it click with the ads he's seen before and complete the impulse to pick it up? If it does, you have greatly increased your chance to make a sale.
Quality Printing
None of the design elements will be effective if you don't work with an experienced, well-equipped, quality printer. Someone who's trying to determine the quality of your product will have doubts if the packaging and labeling look cheap, have faded colors, text that doesn't doesn't have sufficient contrast against a background color, type hard to read, or a myriad of other problems that can occur without expert handling.
