Kevin Leibel, president of Innovation Management of LLC, and Ron Farnum, founding partner of Spark Marketing Services, were invited as speakers at a seminar entitled "Designing your food packaging to capture the US market", organised by the Kenan Institute Asia yesterday.

Leibel said successful companies in the US focused on creating packages to motivate customers to try new things and it was important to put a brand story into your product.

"A brand has a story," he said. "A brand has value. A brand differentiates your product. In the case of Thai food, it is important to write brand stories because people feel much more comfortable buying brands."

He said many firms chose to write a brand story to increase their pricing power.

In the first steps to create valuable packages, operators have to analyse their current market situation, determine what their packaging strategies are and optimise external resources, he said.

He mentioned that six important US food trends at the moment were organic, health and wellness, age awareness, portion control, globalisation and food-safety certification.

"When you create your own packages, these are the keys for considering what your target is. Then you can develop your packages to satisfy your target customers," he said.

He said that to create packages operators should consider not only a food product's functional benefits - freshness, easy to use and environmentally friendly - but also emotional benefits and changing consumer behaviour.

He said that today effective packages needed to meet consumer requirements and change individual behaviour. For example, the packaging of cereal bars made consumers more flexible.

"Traditional packages make me eat cereal only for breakfast, but when it is turned into a cereal bar, I can eat it any time of the day," he said. "Thus, good packaging will urge consumers to make more of the product."

He said most packagers did a good job on rational, performance-oriented and functional packaging but they often neglected emotional benefits and the relationship between their packages and customers.

"Few people think of the relationship but it is very important to build influence on consumer purchase and consumption behaviour through their packages," he explained.

He said more than 20,000 products were launched in the US market every year. Therefore, packagers should consider carefully how to make their products stand out on the shelves to gain attention from their customers.

In the food business, operators have to face many challenges such as new competitors, an increase in material choices and greater complexity of consumer needs.

Hence, he suggested that operators should pay more attention to build an innovative process based on market demands. Moreover, they should concentrate more on defining and building two-way partnerships with consumers to create effective packaging strategies.

"Talk to your customers about what they want or need. Do not guess," he said.

Chalida Ekvitthayavechnukul

The Nation