If you really want to know how and why consumers purchase and use your product, Heather Maxwell recommends holding these discussions “in context.” By doing so, you can make more informed decisions in package design.

Success requires talking on-site to shoppers and store associates about your brand, says Maxwell, Consumer Insights Associate at General Mills. Brand marketers and designers are doing that universally, right? A little informal polling shows something quite different actually is happening. At two recent conferences, audiences consisting of brand, marketing, and design managers were asked whether they do in-store research. A lot of hands went up when those managers were asked if they visit stores. Far fewer hands rose when attendees were asked whether they talk to people in the store as they shop or stock shelves.

At a recent conference called PROOF: Packaging Connects, Maxwell explained that in-context discussions about your products push those who are responsible for package design and development into their product’s “habitat” in the store. These discussions also reveal the gap between what consumers and store associates say and what they do.

Case in point: General Mills noted good initial returns for one of its products during package-design testing at a grocery store, but then sales mysteriously slowed. Maxwell visited the store and happened upon a stock clerk who revealed his inability to keep the product stocked fast enough on a shelf near eye level. He solved the problem by moving the product to the top shelf, where fewer consumers noticed it and could reach it. As might be expected, sales dipped.

“Conventional research would not have detected this as the reason,” Maxwell said.

Useful in-context insights also were gleaned in conversation at our table over lunch during PROOF. One man said he uses a box cutter to reduce the carton size in his pantry as his kids eat their cereal. A woman revealed that she uses tongs and other kitchen utensils to grab onto holes she pokes into cartons she stores on the top shelves of the narrow pantry in her high-ceiling kitchen. Each of these compensating behaviors has potential implications for package design.

What insights can you glean from your own in-context discussions? The answers may help you solve consumer challenges or fill a gap in your category—and increase sales.

By Jim George, Editor