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on by the competitor. Both for the designing and for the redesigning of a packaging, a number of elements should be taken into consideration, such as for instance:
- a perfect and continuous knowledge of all that is happening on the market, in the respective domain;
- the identification of the tendencies existing in the technology including the technological innovations connected with the properties and composition of the materials the packging is made of;
. - the implications for the packagings of the changes of the marketing strategies;
- the changes which take place in the immediate environment where a product is deposited, presented, sold and utilized.
Product Profile. In order to obtain the best results, the designer should begin his activity as early as the beginning of the product's development.
If a designer has not been resorted to, from the very beginning, the best guide the latter can utilize is the so-called product profile, on the basis of which he can analyze, estimate or develop the design. The product profile is an inventory of the information through which the designer learns all he has to know about the following elements:
- how and where the product was made;
- how it will be transported and what are the types of the depositing
installations;
- where it is to be sold;
- who is to utilize it;
- what is the product's nature;
- what are the legal conditions and requirements;
- other significant aspects.
Efficient Factors In The Design. Products manufactured in large quantities must be contained to meet a variety of requirements which do not normally apply to customized products. Readable identification and instruction must be clear not only to the consumer but to the retailer and distributor as well. The other factors which should be taken into consideration are reliability in shipping, product protection and space economy in storage.
The body of knowledge and inform a tion on the basis of which the designer can efficiently carry out his designing mission is very vast. He should have a Iknowledge of the production line and of its capabillities; he should be accustomed to the pro dust's life cycle, he should analyse the nature of the product and the rival products compatibility of the product and the different composition alternatives; he should find the proper languages in order to create images favorable to the product, for a variety of segments of consumers, with a view to determining the latter to buy the product and to utilize it so as the product should be sold repeatedly.
Importance Of Market Studies. Consumer market research and testing provides valuable information in the analytical and valuation phase of the design. The designer should participate in the structuring of the research, otherwise the latter will not help him to finalize the formulating of the design. There is a variety of methods meant to estimate the different elements of the design.
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The Panel Tests consist of groups of female consumers exarrunmg a large range of articles. The designer can interpolate the panelists' emotional or behavioral responses into his early design concepts.
A Paired Comparison Test refers to the answers to questions asked in connection with the alternative solutions for new designs, which shows if the design concept of the creator is the object of the consumers' preferences. The investigator asks every person separate questions and the results are listed and compared.
Optical Devices And Readability Tests provide information about the way the design and the colour are understood and their degree of attractiveness.
The quantitative tests are practised on large samples in which the respondents are asked questions with a view to determining their tastes and the structure of their purchasing behavior in various regions.
The final test is usually a marketing test. This test establishes if the product and its packaging can be successful in the actual regional conditions of the market and of the existing competition. Therefore the success of this testing proves the thoroughness of the preparatory work and the total design development.
Packaging As Functionality And Marchandising Instrument. For the marketing manager packaging has a double importance, both as functionality and as merchandising. From a functional viewpoint, packaging should protect its content and from the merchandising point of view the packaging should contribute to the increase of the sales. The latter aspect is certainly far more evident with consumer goods, but it cannot be overlooked by the firms producing industrial goods. The shipping container itself has an ever greater merchandising value. Very often the packaging can make the consumer of the firm's product become a consumer of another firm's product.
The Athens Seminar in its totality occasioned an excellent and advanced exchange of ideas andof better classifications of concepts in the domain of new products. In fact this is the tangible form of intelectual and scientific progress: the improvement of the organizing of our knowledge about man, society and the universe we live in.
ORGANIZING AND PLANNING MARKETING PROGRAM MARKETING MANAGEMENT APPROACH IN MACRO AND MICRO ECONOMIC PLANNING (THE PRAGUE SEMINAR)
Under the aegis of the International Marketing Federation the Czechoslovakian Marketing Association together with ESOMAR (European Society for Opinion and Marketing Research): between November 23-26, 1969, was organized an International Seminar on the theme Marketing Management and Economic Planning.