Kansei engineering toolkit for the packaging industry

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to describe the Kansei engineering toolkit that has been developed to provide a set of tools and techniques to support better packaging design. Design/methodology/approach The toolkit has its foundations in Kansei engineering but the work has extended the scope and increased reliability of results by: including structured linkages to designers; replacing “highest level Kansei” from Kansei type 1 with brand values; introducing a more structured process for the elicitation of type 2 selection of pack physical properties; reducing the complexity of the semantic differential survey used to elicit consumer perceptions; and structuring a process for selection of the Kansei words. Findings The work has shown that the proposed toolkit is able to support the design of packaging by illustrating the process with industrial case studies. Research limitations/implications Kansei engineering and the techniques presented in this toolkit are inevitably simplifications of the real situation, since many more variables affect the consumers purchase decision than is tested in this process. There is still a need to test the insights gained by the toolkit into a wider investigation. Practical implications This paper offers the packaging industry a robust and repeatable method to develop better packaging. Originality/value The paper presents an overall description of the Kansei engineering toolkit for packaging design and is a structured process that provides quantitative results for the relationship between branding, consumer perception and design variables.