A Study on the Influence of Formal Language Characteristics in Minimalist Tea Package Covers on Consumers’ Purchase Intentions Based on the SOR Theory

This study aimed to empirically investigate how the formal language characteristics of minimalist tea package covers affect purchase intentions through consumers' cognitive and emotional responses based on the SOR theory.To this end, four visual formal characteristics-simplicity, unity, symbolism, and balance-were set as the main independent variables through literature review and expert interviews, and a structural equation model was designed by setting cognitive and emotional responses as parallel parameters and purchase intentions as the dependent variable.The study analyzed minimalist tea package cases from the 2019-2024 iF Design Award and derived representative cases through heat map visualization based on expert evaluation.Afterwards, a survey was conducted using refined stimulus images to collect 230 valid samples, and reliability, validity, and path analyses were conducted using SPSS and AMOS.The analysis results showed that all four formal language characteristics had a significant effect on cognitive and emotional responses, and that cognitive and emotional responses also had a positive effect on purchase intentions.In particular, it was confirmed that symbolism and balance had an indirect effect through the emotional route, whereas simplicity and unity had an indirect effect through the cognitive route.The findings of this study offer meaningful implications for establishing both theoretical and practical design strategies by clarifying the structural mechanism through which design elements based on formal language affect changes in consumer psychology and behavior.