Do faces help packs get attention in e-commerce environments?

  • REPORT 135
  • Jenni Romaniuk, Will Caruso and Ella Ward

Abstract

Faces naturally grab our attention due to evolutionary biology; we are drawn to look at faces to check if the owner of the face is friend or foe, potential mate or potential threat. It’s so ingrained into our neural processing that we have a region of the brain, the fusiform face area, specialised for facial recognition. For this reason, faces can be a valuable Distinctive Asset, helping brands to capture attention in cluttered advertising and retail environments.  One such environment is grocery e-commerce, within which only a small thumbnail is available for a brand to attract attention. In this context, is there an advantage to brands placing face-based Distinctive Assets (such as Mr Pringles) on pack? This report examines whether putting a face on product packaging is a good use of visual real estate, by asking the question:  Do packs that feature faces get found more often or more quickly?

The answer is no, we do not find any significant attentional advantage for packs with faces in an e-commerce environment. Packs with faces were not selected significantly more often, nor were they located more quickly, than the same packs without faces.  We suspect this is because the face on a pack thumbnail is so small, it cannot activate the minimum threshold for cognitive processing that garners attention in other contexts.  Therefore, if your brand doesn’t have a face on its pack, there is no e-commerce advantage in adding one. If you do have a face on your pack and want to remove it, our results suggest there will be no foreseeable loss of attention in an online shopping context.

Study Overview

The study involved 896 UK participants, all of whom had recently purchased from at least one of five grocery categories: crisps, ready-made meals, vitamins, toilet cleaner, and salad dressing. Participants were shown mock e-commerce pages (as seen in Figure 1) featuring eight brands per category. We used a split sample design, in which one group saw packaging with a face and another group viewed the same packaging without the face. Respondents were asked to select the pack that stood out or caught their eye, and their response time was recorded. We also asked an open ended verbatim as to why they chose that pack.

Treatment Conditions: We tested five face types (seen in Figure 2), including real people (e.g., Mary Berry) and animated characters (e.g., Mr. Pringles). The test packs where the only packs that contained faces. Other packs remained unchanged from their normal e-commerce offering.

Measures:

  • Visual attention: Percentage of respondents who selected the pack as standing out.
  • Speed: Time taken to identify the pack

 

Figure 1: Example of page for Crisps

 

Figure 2: Packaging examples with/without faces

 

Key Findings

Packs with faces were not significantly more likely to be selected as standing out, nor where they identified quicker than the equivalent pack without a face (see Table 1).

Table 1: Face vs no face selection comparisons

These results indicate that faces used on e-commerce packaging thumbnails do not attract additional attention in the context of online shopping, perhaps due to their small size. This outcome suggests the faces fail to activate the minimum threshold required for the neural stimulation that makes faces effective in other settings, such as advertising.

 

 

Implications for Packaging Design

If you don’t already have a face on your pack, consider building another shopping Distinctive Asset: Rather than adding a face-based asset, such as a character, brands should invest in the Distinctive Assets already central to their identity, and those that stand out in thumbnail formats (e.g., colour, pack shape).

Even if you have a face on your pack, build other shopping Distinctive Assets: A limitation of the e-commerce environment is the size of the thumbnail; look to build shopping assets that can work within the constraints of a small space.  If you need to remove the face to make room for another asset, our results suggest this trade-off may be worthwhile. Be sure to consider the importance of the face-based asset to pack recognition before making your decision.

Just because a Distinctive Asset works in one environment, doesn’t mean it will work in another: Understanding the sales and media channels in which your brand operates is crucial for creating a Distinctive Asset Palette that allows you to execute excellent branding across all environments.

More findings on standing out in e-commerce environments will be coming soon!

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