The Impact of Visual Design Elements in Tea Bag Packaging on Consumer Behaviour: A Prototype and Pilot Study

Previous research has emphasised the importance of product packaging on consumers' purchase intention; however, empirical studies exploring the specific mechanisms of how packaging design visual elements influence consumer purchase intention remain scarce. In particular, there is a lack of investigation into different levels (sub-dimensions) of design elements, which fails to provide specific guidance for packaging design strategies. This study aims to fill this gap by developing bagged tea packaging design prototypes as visual stimulus materials to examine the effects of packaging design visual elements on consumer responses. First, this study developed 14 bagged tea packaging design prototypes through orthogonal experimental design, incorporating different combinations of five key visual design elements (colour, graphics, logo, typography and layout). These prototypes, after expert evaluation, were used as visual stimulus materials. Second, this study conducted a pilot study with 168 young consumers aged 20 to 29 using scales adapted from previous well-established measures (assessing consumers' brand experience, purchase intention and satisfaction) after expert validation. Preliminary findings indicate that the packaging design prototypes based on orthogonal testing can serve as visual stimulus materials for respondents, and the scale developed in this study has demonstrated good reliability and validity through confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), making it suitable for subsequent research. Moreover, considering sample size limitations, this study employed Kruskal-Wallis tests for preliminary exploration. The visual elements of packaging design (such as Colour, Graphics and Layout) showed significant effects on consumers' brand experience and purchase intention, providing support for the research hypotheses; although the significance of Logo and Typography is limited, they still provide a methodological basis for subsequent exploration of their direct and indirect effects. The results of this pilot study encourage further methods of enhancing consumer purchase intention using orthogonal test-based packaging design prototypes as stimulus materials.