Comunicación silenciosa: estudio comparativo internacional de envases de juguetes

Abstract

Packaging has been considered by Marketing experts as a silent sales agent. Specially, for those toys without advertising support, packaging represents the key element to communicate with the end consumer. After revising all published articles about this matter, we found three dimensions to be considered: formal, functional, and communicational, all them aggregating a number of 24 different considerations. The questions we have formulated are as follows: Which are the formal aspects we can consistently find in the Toy industry packaging? Which are the utilities found in those Toy packaging? Is there a particular treatment of packaging depending on the Toy category? Can we find packaging peculiarities considering the origin of the manufacturer? We have investigated 301 different packaging coming from 82 different manufacturers (70% of those manufacturers were not spanish manufacturers) and we have made a deep analysis considering both, structure and characteristics. We conclude that formally, packaging is quite similar and conventional but they have some very special products inside and this is not what this should be. Under the point of view of functionality, packaging are good enough to cover, protect, transport and warehouse the products, but they do not take advantage of the potential communication and emotional influence on the end consumer. We conclude that the strategic treatment of packaging inside Toy industry is something that could be improved.