Authors:

Abstract

Designing an eco-friendly offering for the market needs a thorough understanding of the nature of eco-friendly consumers. However, organizations are merely concerned about the impact of eco-friendly packaging on purchasing behavior of the consumer without considering the main elements demanded by consumers in detail. Hence, organizations spend many resources on ecofriendly packaging without emphasizing the effect of packaging elements on consumer buying decisions that ultimately yield low profits with foreseeable environmental threats. The absence of concrete results published in this regard, especially concerning the Sri Lankan context accelerates this negative impact. Therefore, the present research examines the effect of visual and verbal elements of eco-friendly packaging on consumer buying behavior with special reference to dairy products while considering visual and verbal as the main packaging elements and dairy products as the main product category.

Data were collected by distributing a pre-tested structured questionnaire among the consumers (n = 104) shopping at Cargills Food city outlet, Galgamuwa. Wilcoxon Signed-Rank test results revealed that, visual elements: shape (p = 0.001; t = 5.029), material (p = 0.001; t = 7.412), size (p = 0.001; t = 5.029) and graphics on the package (p = 0.064; t = -1.849) showed a significant impact on buying behavior while, color (p = 0.706; t = -0.377) proved insignificant. Moreover, verbal elements including product (p = 0.000; t = 7.771)) and nutritional (p = 0.001; t = 7.454) facts showed a highly significant impact on purchasing dairy products with eco-friendly packaging. The Chisquare test revealed a highly significant relationship between purchasing environmentally-friendly packages with educational level (p = 0.015; x² = 12.339) and a marginally significant relationship with the occupation of consumers (p = 0.064; x² = 8.900). Findings of this research direct marketers, and product designers, in particular, to manufacture packages incorporating consumer-preferred visual and verbal elements of packaging to attract consumers towards eco-friendly packed dairy products in particular.

Keywords: Consumer buying behavior, Eco-friendly packaging, Elements of packaging