Mapping Perfume Fragrances for Packaging Design: Exploring Archetypical Design Characteristics in Concept Development

Consumers often rely on the design of packages to inform themselves about products. It is therefore important to establish a link between the package and the product inside. However, few studies describe how designers practically can go about in achieving this linkage in packaging design. In this paper, we describe the design process underlying the creation of a new perfume bottle concept. In the case of perfume, the bottle needs to provide consumers cues about the content (scent) inside. Therefore, consumer insights on the link between design and product characteristics were therefore explored during the design process. 450 female participants rated 32 non-branded bottles with respect to the scents and metaphors they expressed. The bottles were systematically altered in terms of roundness, elongation, material and color. The results unveiled associations between bottle design characteristics, scent characteristics and (advertising) metaphors. In the design process, we explored these results further through the use of a perceptual map. The paper describes how we went about in developing the perceptual map.