Abstract
How consumers understand products is based largely on their communication with the products, which is significantly influenced not only by the consumers’ cultural background but also by the cultural context where the communication happens. This paper viewed consumers as readers who play active roles in the dynamic structure of communication and discussed how cultural factors affect consumers in reading design. Companies are now striving to create visually desirable products that can be universally recognized in the increasingly global marketplace. ‘Lao Gan Ma’, the most popular chilli sauce brand in China, was introduced as a case study in this paper. In spite of being well-known as a cultural icon in China, ‘Lao Gan Ma’ is little known to most non-Chinese consumers abroad. This paper presented a conceptual framework to culturally analyse the visual presentation of Lao Gan Ma’s packaging design. In conclusion, it illustrated that consumers’ reading is culture specific, and it provided detailed findings of how consumers read the visual aspects of food packaging design in a cross-cultural context.
Keywords
communication; visual presentation; food packaging; cross-cultural context
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2018.260
Citation
Hu, L., and Dong, H. (2018) How Consumers Read the Visual Presentation of Food Packaging Design in a Cross-cultural Context: a conceptual framework and case study, in Storni, C., Leahy, K., McMahon, M., Lloyd, P. and Bohemia, E. (eds.), Design as a catalyst for change - DRS International Conference 2018, 25-28 June, Limerick, Ireland. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2018.260
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
How Consumers Read the Visual Presentation of Food Packaging Design in a Cross-cultural Context: a conceptual framework and case study
How consumers understand products is based largely on their communication with the products, which is significantly influenced not only by the consumers’ cultural background but also by the cultural context where the communication happens. This paper viewed consumers as readers who play active roles in the dynamic structure of communication and discussed how cultural factors affect consumers in reading design. Companies are now striving to create visually desirable products that can be universally recognized in the increasingly global marketplace. ‘Lao Gan Ma’, the most popular chilli sauce brand in China, was introduced as a case study in this paper. In spite of being well-known as a cultural icon in China, ‘Lao Gan Ma’ is little known to most non-Chinese consumers abroad. This paper presented a conceptual framework to culturally analyse the visual presentation of Lao Gan Ma’s packaging design. In conclusion, it illustrated that consumers’ reading is culture specific, and it provided detailed findings of how consumers read the visual aspects of food packaging design in a cross-cultural context.