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Using Gamified Packaging to Increase Child Influence on Family Consumption of Healthy Foods

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Abstract

Children have always influenced family purchase decisions. To investigate this influence, a pilot research is performed on 8 different product categories and 166 parents of children aged 7–12 were questioned. The survey findings indicate that children have quite strong influence on the family decision making processes, particularly for products relevant to them like food categories. As the knowledge of family buying role is important in developing appropriate marketing strategies, the extracted information from the survey leads the research to increase child’s influence on buying healthy food for the whole family. In comparison with Martensen’s investigation, this paper proposes a similar methodology in a match complex framework. The selected products are adapted with the shopping basket of Iranian families. A framework is suggested which shows the correlations between stages of purchase with gamification elements and food dimensions. A series of gamified packages are designed based on the framework and their prototypes are evaluated by a number of 26 children aged 7–9 and a number of 21 parents. The results suggest that gamified packaging can influence children’s and parents’ purchase intentions and can be one of the most important elements to promote healthy food.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. MA Industrial Design, Alborz Campus, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

    Elham Atighi Lorestani

  2. Department of Industrial Design, College of Fine Arts, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

    Maryam Khalili

Authors
  1. Elham Atighi Lorestani
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  2. Maryam Khalili
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Correspondence to Maryam Khalili.

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Appendix (Questionnaire)

Appendix (Questionnaire)

In advance we are thankful for your time and cooperation. We are a group of researchers and the purpose of our research is to measure parents’ perception of their child’s influence on the family purchase and we use the results for designing products’ packaging.

There are 8 categories of products: some of them are durable and some of them are nondurable products. The influence is measured in three sub-decision stages of purchase (1. Suggestion to buy a product category; 2. Choice of brand; 3. Choice of model). Also the influence is measured on a four-category ordinal scale. You are not obligated to fill out all of the product types, just the ones your child has a level of influence on any of three sub-decision stages of purchase. Please evaluate the non-durable products within the past 2 months and durable products within the past 2 years. Estimated time for completing the table is 10–15 min.

Personal Information:

Age:

Parent: mother/father

Your child age:

Numbers in the Tables 2 and 3 indicate: 4 = Decision made entirely by the child; 3 = The child influences the decision; 2 = Parents take the child into account; 1 = Decision made entirely by parents.

Product types

Suggesting buying the product category

Deciding on brand

Deciding in model

4

3

2

1

4

3

2

1

4

3

2

1

Juice

            

Ketchup

            

Snack

            

Jam

            

Toys

            

Dairy

            

Mobile Phone

            

Cars

            

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Atighi Lorestani, E., Khalili, M. Using Gamified Packaging to Increase Child Influence on Family Consumption of Healthy Foods. J Package Technol Res 4, 57–67 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41783-019-00076-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41783-019-00076-7

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