The impact of visual and child-oriented packaging elements versus information on children’s purchase influence across various age groups

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of recalling visual and child-oriented product packaging elements vs informational content on children’s influence on household purchases. Design/methodology/approach – The study was conducted using quantitative research among 100 French consumers of breakfast cereals aged six to 11. Findings – The paper challenges previous findings. First, the recall of the various types of packaging elements was equivalent across age groups. Second, the impact of visual and child-oriented element recall on purchase influences was high, especially for younger children, but not superior to the impact of recalling informational packaging elements. Third, adding information and other elements to visuals reduced young children’s intentions to influence purchases, suggesting that the overload – not the nature – of elements has a negative impact. Fourth, packaging recall seemed weakly related to purchase influence – at least for well-known brands. Research limitations/implications – Further research on larger samples will allow to encompass potential moderators such as brand context, consumer context and packaging stimulus. Research should also compare the positive (reassuring) influence of adding informational elements on mothers to the negative one it has on children’s influence. Practical implications – These findings can be used to wisely plan retailers’ packaging strategy. But all in all, retail packaging represents only one of the many factors which impact upon children’s diet and food consumptions and should be reassessed in the face other influences. Originality/value – The findings challenge and expand one’s knowledge on the relationship between children and the relative influence of child-oriented elements and information, across age groups.