Packaging strategy of men's skin care products in China

Abstract

Sponsored by Unilever, this project was originated in the department of Packaging, aiming at developing strategic packaging advice for brand X’s men’s face care category in China. The main goal of this project was to give recommendations for the packaging team to develop attractive and suitable packages for the brand X. Brand x is a face care brand, which has been in Chinese female skin care market for years, and the company was planning to launch its first-ever male face care category in China. However, in the aspect of packaging, little knowledge was available about men in China. All these factors resulted in the final assignment: What should brand X’s packaging strategy be to make men’s face care products successful in the Chinese market after launch? Specifically, the project can be divided into five stages. In stage 1 literatures about packaging development is reviewed to get a better understanding of the packaging development area; stage 2 resembles a thorough analysis including internal/external analysis, market analysis, and competitor analysis. In stage 3 the market positioning for brand x is determined in order to decide which values should be communicated by its men’s skin product; and in stage 4, consumer research is carried out to get insights from consumers and to give packaging design recommendations to brand x; stage 5 completes the concept design based on the recommendations received in the preceding phase. Consumer research is a key aspect of this project and the qualitative research method is in focus. One to one in-depth interview and focus group discussion have been carried out during the process for gathering insights from consumers, and final design recommendations have bee created based on this information. In the end, several packaging concepts have been designed by four industrial design students and myself. The design has been based on the recommendations in order to test whether the recommendations are clear enough for the product design phase at a later stage.