This study used a fictive brand to investigate the effects of atypical packaging and product claims on product evaluation.
The absence of any effects on purchase intention may result from the use of fictive brands in our research design. Wright and MacRae (2007) concluded that the Juster Scale is a reliable scale to measure purchase (probability) intention for existing brands. However, it might be less suited to measure product evaluations of fictive brands, since participants are not well able to estimate the chance that they would buy a fictive product. The use of a fictive brand has the advantage that the effect of confounding variables such as brand image and attitudes towards the brand are
ruled out. However, it is not yet clear to what extent our findings are generalizable to packaging designs of existing brands.
a brand changes its product packaging, the elements that consumers
use to identify the brand should be retained. Changes in
these elements could negatively affect brand equity and existing
brand evaluations (Labrecque & Milne, 2012). Therefore, our
results may principally generalize to new brands, or brands that
have a small share. Further research is necessary to investigate
these notions.