COP 3 Topic and feedback

How does packaging design influence consumer purchases in relation to "health foods"?

Feedback
This is a good topic and has the right level of specificity and research opportunities. You need to consider more carefully what theories you think will be necessary to explore and what books you will read over summer. You do not need to be looking at more design books at this stage because you already know enough about design. On the other hand you do not know enough about the wider factors involved in why people choose to or choose not to buy healthy food. Picking up a general text book on consumer culture, consumer behaviour or consumer psychology will provide a good entry to the theoretical approaches to studying this topic which should lead to further reading. There is also perhaps something to be said about self-identity, reflexivity and neo-liberalism here too so try Giddens’ Self-identity in Late Modernity as a starting point.

to do
- Read Giddens' Self Identity in Late Modernity
- find further textbooks on consumer behaviour/psychology
- Erich Fromm The sane society

CW Mills the competitive personality partisan review
riesman the lonely crowd: a study of the changing american character
Goffman - the presentation of self in everyday life
Terry Castle
Philosophi Phisnomia
appearance and the self - gregory stone (1962)

Food for thought notes

Coleman, V. (2000). Food for thought. Barnstaple, Devon: European Medical Journal.

page 43

I believe that it will very soon be difficult (if not impossible) to obtain good quality food which contains the necessary basic ingredients for healthy living. It is already difficult to buy decent food. Supermarkets are very patchy suppliers of organic foods.

The food industry has recently introduced a number of techniques which are clearly not going to go away.

Moreover, there is, I believe, a very real chance that the quality of organic food will deteriorate dramatically in the next year or two. The American food Goliaths are keen to dilute the meaning of the phrase ‘organic food’ and, sooner or later, I believe that they will succeed.

Unless you grow your own food the chances are that within a few years the only food available (whether or not it is labelled as ‘organic’) will contain a rich mixture of hormones, chemicals, drug residues and other possible carcinogens.

Consider the actual truth behind "health/healthy" foods. 

page 73

Become a cynic when reading food advertisements and food labels. Over the last few years the food industry has managed to devalue the word ‘natural’ so that it has become virtually meaningless. For example, the phrase ‘only natural ingredients’ is sometimes used to describe foods which are stuffed with additives if those additives are chemicals that occur naturally, or synthetic versions of chemicals which occur naturally.

page 166

Inevitably, perhaps, the food industry’s immediate, knee - jerk response to this discovery was to start selling consumers bran and fibre supplements. Instead of encouraging people to buy more natural foods, full of natural fibre, the massive, international industry continued to sell packaged foods from which the fibre had been removed - but added a new range of foods which had been artificially enriched with fibre and many new varieties of fibre supplements. It was a trick of stupefying audacity, but it worked: all around the globe, in so called developed countries, people who regarded themselves as educated and intelligent consumers sought to balance their fibre deprived diets by purchasing and swallowing these artificial fibre supplements. Having paid the food industry to take the essential fibre out of their food they then paid the industry a second time to buy the fibre back.

page 231

Finding out exactly what you shouldn’t eat isn’t quite so easy. The truth is shrouded in mystery and confusion - much of created, quite deliberately, on behalf of vested interests, by lobbyists, advertising agencies and public relations groups.

The far reaching tentacles of the big food companies are as powerful as those of the big drug companies. Finding the truth is made particularly difficult by the fact that many newspapers, magazines and journals readily publish material they are given by companies with products to sell.

^ Influence of media upon consumers and sales of food.

page 258

The slimming ‘industry’ is the biggest and most profitable part of the healthcare industry and many companies and individuals have made fortunes out of the twin facts that losing weight is harder than putting it on and that most would-be slimmers are on the constant look out for an easy, quick and painless way to lose weight. Everyone, it sometimes seems, wants to lose weight, but no one wants to have to work at it.

Weight watchers, slimming world, etc. Research these companies and their appeal.

Giddens notes

Giddens, A. and Sutton, P. (2014). Modernity and self-identity. [Place of publication not identified]: Polity Press.

Page 5

In modern social life, the notion of lifestyle takes on a particular significance.

Lifestyle choice is increasingly important in the constitution of self identity and daily activity.

Page 6

‘“Lifestyle" refers also to decisions taken and courses of action followed under conditions of severe material constraint; such lifestyle patterns may sometimes also involve the more or less deliberate rejection of more widely diffused forms of behaviour and consumption.’ 

Health food can be expensive and people choose/are forced not to eat because of the cost. (FIND SOURCES TO BACK THIS UP).

Page 7

The reflexivity of the self, in conjunction with the influence of abstract systems, pervasively affects the body as well as psychic processes. The body is less and less an extrinsic given, functioning outside the internally referential systems of modernity, but becomes itself reflexively mobilised. What might appear as a wholesale movement towards the narcissistic cultivation of bodily appearance is in fact an expression of a concern lying much deeper actively to ‘construct’ and control the body. Here there is an integral connection between bodily development and lifestyle - manifest, for example, in the pursuit of specific bodily regimes.

Relevant to health foods and a healthier lifestyle - in order to look better and take control of ones own body. bodily regimes - eating healthily and exercising.

Page 14

Modernity is a post traditional order in which the question ‘How shall I live?’ has to be answered in day to day decisions about how to behave, what to wear and what to eat - and many other things - as well as interpreted within the temporal unfolding of self identity.

What to eat is an integral part of life - consider how big a part of life it is for some people.

Page 23 

Various attitudes of scepticism or antagonism towards abstract systems may coexist with a taken for granted confidence in others. For example, a person may go to great lengths to avoid eating foods that contain additives, but if that individual does not grow everything he or she eats, trust must necessarily be invested in the purveyors of ‘natural foods’ to provide superior products.

Look at the trust people have in purveyors of health foods - the advantages/disadvantages for the purveyors and same for the consumers. 

Page 35

The social conventions produced and reproduced in our day to day activities are reflexively monitored by the agent as part of ‘going on’ in the variegated settings of our lives. Reflexive awareness in this sense is characteristic of all human action, and is the specific condition of that massively developed institutional reflexivity spoken of in the preceding chapter as an intrinsic component of modernity.

Page 52

Self identity in other words is not something that is just given as a result as the continuities of the individuals action system, but something that has to be routinely created and sustained in the reflexive activities of the individual.

Continuing reflexivity and self assessment - sustained building of character, change to routine, habits and personality can affect identity.

Page 62

Regimes are of central importance to self identity precisely because they connect habits with aspects of the visible appearance of the body. Habits of eating are ritual displays in themselves, but they also affect bodily form, perhaps indicating something about the background of the individual as well as a certain self image which he or she has cultivated. Eating regimes also have their pathologies, and are connected with various persistent kinds of positive accentuations of bodily discipline.

Look at eating disorders and importance of regime and effect of broken regime within eating.

Page 73

Taking charge of ones life involves risk, because it means confronting a diversity of open possibilities. The individual must be prepared to make a more or less complete break with the past, if necessary, and to contemplate novel courses of action that cannot simply be guided by established habits.

Eating healthier is a change to lifestyle - changing set habits due to health.

Page 77

Body awareness also includes awareness of requirements of exercise and diet. Rainwater points out that people speak of going on a diet - but we are all on a diet! Our diet is what we eat; at many junctures of the day we take decisions about whether or not to eat and drink, and exactly what to eat and drink. ‘If you don’t like the diet you are on, there is a new minute and new choice - point coming up, and you can change your diet. You’re in charge!’ (Rainwater, self-therapy p 172)

Page 82

The plurality of choices which confronts individuals in situations of high modernity derives from several influences. First, there is the fact of living in a post - traditional order. To act in, to engage with, a world of plural choices is to opt for alternatives, given that the signposts established by tradition now are blank. Thus someone might decide, for example, to ignore the research findings which appear to show that a diet high in fruit and fibre, and low in sugar, fat and alcohol, is physically beneficial and reduces the risk of contracting some types of illnesses. She might resolutely stick to the same diet of dense, fatty, sugary foods that people in the previous generation consumed. Yet, given the available options in matters of diet and the fact that the individual has at least some awareness of them, such conduct still forms part of a distinctive lifestyle.

Page 100

In the post traditional environments of high modernity, neither appearance or demeanour can be organised as given; the body participates in a very direct way in the principle that the self has to be constructed. Bodily regimes, which also bear directly on patterns of sensuality, are the prime means whereby the institutional reflexivity of modern social life is focused on the cultivation - almost, one might say, the creation - of the body.

Importance of the body, strength/appearance as reflected on rest of self (mental state, health)

Page 102

What does it mean to say that the body has become part of the reflexivity of modernity. Body regimes and the organisation of sensuality in high modernity become open to continuous reflexive attention, against the backdrop of plurality of choice. Both life planning and the adoption of lifestyle options become (in principle) integrated with bodily regimes. It would be quite short sighted to see this phenomenon only in terms of changing ideals of bodily appearance (such as slimness or youthfulness) or as solely brought about  by the commodifying influence of advertising. We became responsible for the design of our own bodies, and in a certain sense noted above are forced to do so the more post traditional the social contexts in which we move.

Page 105

Yet it is important to recognise that the 1920s was also a period at which ‘diet’ in the broader sense for the first time became associated with the control of weight and the self regulation of health; and this was also the period at which the manufacture of foods began to accelerate, leading to a much wider diversity of foodstuffs becoming available. ‘Being on a diet’ in the narrow meaning of the phrase is only a particular version of a much more general phenomenon - the cultivation of bodily regimes as a means of reflexively influencing the project of the self.

Diet as fads. Meaning of diet straying from a healthy viewpoint to an unhealthy one.

Page 107 

(In reference to anorexia) The tightly controlled body is an emblem of a safe existence in an open social environment.

Gives feeling of control. Your body is virtually the only thing you alone can control.

Page 171

Giving up hope that the wider social environment can be controlled, people retreat to purely personal preoccupations: to psychic and bodily self improvement. 

As above.^

Page 172 

Consumer capitalism, with its efforts to standardise consumption and to shape tastes through advertising, plays a basic role in furthering narcissism. The idea of generating an educated and discerning public has long since succumbed to the pervasiveness of consumerism, which is a ‘society dominated by appearances’. Consumption addresses the alienated qualities of modern social life and claims to be their solution: it promises the very things the narcissist desires - attractiveness, beauty and personal popularity - through the consumption of the ‘right’ kinds of goods and services. Hence, all of us, in modern social conditions, live as though surrounded by mirrors; in these we search for the appearance of an unblemished, socially valued self.

capitalism and how it effects one's appearance.

Page 177

(In relation to Lasch’s views on narcissism) The cultivation of the body, through consideration of diet, dress, facial appearance and other factor, is a common quality of lifestyle activities in contemporary social life.

Through food, fashion, sport/gym, beauty. All shared interests.

Page 178

The body cannot be any longer merely ‘accepted’, fed and adorned according to traditional ritual,; it becomes a core part of the reflexive project of self identity.

Consumer.ology notes

Graves, P. (2013). Consumer.ology. London: Nicholas Brealey.

Page 1

If something seems plausible, impresses us, fits with what we’d like to think, or has been sold to us persuasively, we are willing to treat it as truth. To compound the problem, the lines between science and belief are frequently blurred: elements of dependable science are blended with wishful thinking to create an alluring cocktail of reality and desirable fantasy.

^ Explore how products do this to persuade people into buying. Focus on health products that include data and "science".

Page 2

The concious mind finds it almost impossible to resist putting its spin on events. From the moment we do anything it introduces distortion; when the mind considers the future it does so with an idealism that is both optimistic and simultaneously devoid of any objective assessment of the past.

Page 19

In the end, the unconscious drives that we might characterise as habit, emotion, or impulse often exert a much stronger influence over behaviour than concious intent.

Page 20 

The same is true of our visual sense: how people respond can be influenced by things their eyes have seen that they haven’t consciously registered. 

Could incorporate this into packaging. Texture, illustration, pattern.

Page 23

The concious mind is a powerful tool that, for our own sanity, is highly practiced at wrapping our behaviour in a veneer that suits our perception of ourselves. Generally, people perceive their own actions as self generated, well-intentioned, sensible behaviour.

Page 26

(Referring to website layout & design) People would probably like to think that their purchase of a nutritional supplement was decided by what it contained and what would be most effective, but when the makers Sytropin tested an informative medicinal theme against one that focused on how people’s lives might be after they’d used the product, it found that 50% more people who arrived on the page went on to make a purchase.

https://www.widerfunnel.com/case-studies/sytropin-a-nutritional-supplement-sold-online-realizes-a-50-uplift-in-sales-conversions/ 

^ blog post on this. shows the effect of marketing (specifially online)

Page 27

The truth is that consumer behaviour is a reflection of the complex brain processes that drive all human actions. The unconscious mind is “in play” far more significantly than most people willing to acknowledge. … The unconscious mind works in terms of associations.

Page 45

It would seem that our response to words and the style in which they are written is influenced by the associations and filters we unconsciously map onto them. We unconsciously like what’s easiest and most familiar; in other words, what our brains can process most fluently. But of course, as is the way with the unconscious, we don’t know we’re doing this and that it is shaping our judgements. “oh no”, we tell ourselves, “we’re making concious, balanced, desperately sensible decisions.”

^ Compare this information with scientific writing - compare which type influences us to buy health food more (people may trust more if the writing contains scientific words/data even if they do not understand)

Page 46

Another factor that can help explain why people do things, which again runs counter to our preferred view of ourselves as independent-thinking entities, is our striking propensity for copying what other people do.

^ group behaviour, trends and influence. (as below)

People 47

It’s no surprise then, that consumer fads are so commonplace. Products come along and seem almost essential, so compelling is our desire to buy them, and yet within a matter of months, the excitement passes. Inevitably another fad follows, revealing both the extent to which we are influenced by what goes on around us and our inability to distinguish what’s truly useful from what seems like a good idea because everyone else is doing it.

^blog post on trends and focus on food trends specifically.

Page 62

Creating the appropriate mood around a product - be it by staging an exciting event, wrapping a “hot” celebrity around it, giving it to people when they’re having fun doing something else, or making them feel they’ve got a great bargain - can boost a brand’s appeal precisely because of the phenomenon of unconscious misattribution. Experiencing a powerful feeling at the same time as experiencing the product can be sufficient to make the less rational part of our mind perceive something in a way that it otherwise wouldn’t.

^ Discuss the influence of celebrity endorsements - models and actors eg. Johnny Depp, instagram influencers eg. Tammy Hembrow, The Kardashians/Jenners, youtube make up artists representing brands. 

unconscious misattribution - products freely distributed at festivals, group events such as protests, football matches. Could link and discuss power of advertising/distribution at gyms and sporting events/expos such as body power.

Page 73

In some ways, overweight people tell us all we need to know about the frailties of market research and the benefit of observing behaviour. Many of them hold genuinely positive intentions about reducing the amount they eat at some point or another. Many believe quite strongly that they will lose weight by a given point in the future. Some will confidently state that they don’t overeat or consume foods known to be highly calorific. Many start off on specific diet and exercise plans, often purchased at considerable expense, with a clear sense of purpose that they will change their ways. When the pounds aren’t shed some will be incredulous, believing that they have followed a prescribed weight-loss plan and that, quite simply, “diets don’t work” - to lose weight, their bodies needed something beyond decreasing the ratio of calories consumed to calories expended.

Page 83

When it comes to evaluating promotional material or the effectiveness of packaging, testing the amount of visual attention an item receives can be useful in diagnosing the reason something hasn’t generated the desired sales. If the item concerned isn’t getting prolonged attention, the likelihood is that there is nothing familiar with for it to be both recognisable and feel safe. It’s worth being aware that visual communication has to attract the attention of the unconscious mind at first, before there is the opportunity for someone consciously to appraise the messages. It is the words, images and colours that are of “importance” to the unconscious mind that will cause someone to take notice of something.