(Re)Becoming the obvious choice on the shelf : Step #3 PACK VALIDATION

The Repères approach to validate the effectiveness of your packaging 

In an environment saturated with references and visual stimuli, capturing the shopper's attention is a real challenge. Within just a few seconds, the consumer must see, understand, and choose.

In this highly competitive context, packaging plays a decisive role: it must both attract emotionally and convince rationally.

Depending on your stage of pack development, Repères has designed two complementary approaches.

Upstream: Agile screening to select the best design 

When comparing several creative pack routes, it's not enough to measure purchase intent or declared liking.
While these rational indicators are useful, they offer only a partial view: in‑store decisions are largely driven by fast, emotional, and often unconscious reactions. To identify the most promising design, it's essential to combine both dimensions - what consumers feel instinctively and what they articulate thoughtfully.

Our screening protocol allows for the evaluation of several pack routes in sequence, based on a short questionnaire inspired by Kahneman's dual‑system theory:

• System 1: emotional, intuitive

• System 2: rational, analytical

For each pack, the following dimensions can be assessed:

• Emotional impact via our exclusive R3M Score©, revealing the spontaneous emotions, values, and perceived assets.

• Precise areas of liking or rejection using the Hotspot module.

• Sensory and image benefits through the CATA (Check All That Apply) module.

• Rational engagement and validation through measures of attractiveness, purchase intent, perceived benefits, and overall image.

This enables you to secure your decision, by identifying the design that is most engaging and aligned with both the conscious expectations and the emotional drivers of your consumers - beyond a simple go/no‑go indicator.

Downstream: Real‑life validation of your pack 

A strong design must also prove its effectiveness in a real‑world competitive environment. It's crucial to validate your pack's ability to stand out and convince on shelf.

Our in‑depth validation methodology is built on four key principles:

• Confront your pack with its real competitive universe
  → Simulate a genuine choice context, where the shopper must decide between several options.

• Reproduce the shopper's attention journey
  → Funnel approach: from all offers on shelf, to a narrowed selection, and finally a detailed evaluation of your pack.

• Assess distinctiveness in relative terms (not just absolute)
  → What matters is not only whether your pack is liked, but what makes it stand out.
  Does it convey a strong and unique territory? Or is it perceived as interchangeable?

• Integrate the shopper's emotional system
  → Decisions in‑store happen within seconds.
  It's therefore essential to evaluate both rational judgments (System 2) and spontaneous emotional reactions (System 1) using tools like the R3M Score©.

To replicate realistic shelf conditions, several setups are possible depending on your constraints:

• Central location tests with life‑size products (physical shelves or large‑format visuals), or

• Online tests with digital planograms or e‑commerce environments.

Key dimensions to measure

Regardless of the protocol, we always recommend assessing three essential performance dimensions:

• EMERGENCE – the pack's ability to stand out on shelf

• UNDERSTANDING– the clarity of product benefits and the image evoked by the pack

• CONVICTION – attractiveness and ability to drive choice in a competitive universe

This approach ensures a robust and actionable validation of your pack's performance, helping you clearly identify what differentiates it from competitors and how effectively it drives attention and choice.

👉 Planning a pack renovation or launch?

Let's talk. Our team will help you test your designs with a protocol tailored to your objectives - and to real shelf conditions.

Discover the other steps of “(Re)Becoming the Obvious Choice on Shelf” : #1DIAGNOSIS and #2 OPTIMIZATION