Packaging design elements and consumers' decision to buy from the Web: A cause and effect decision‐making model

Recent advances in e-commerce have resulted in significant progress being made toward strategies, requirements, and the development of various mechanisms aimed at influencing consumers' decisions to purchase online. The relationship between different packaging design elements and their effect on consumers' online buying decisions has been less researched, due in part to the lack of statistical power to detect cause and effect relationships between these elements. This study examines the feasibility of multiple-criteria decision-making in order to identify and analyze the causal relationships between the different packaging design elements that are required to stimulate consumers' decision to buy products online. Consumers' direct, indirect, and interdependent behaviors in relation to PDEs and purchase decisions were studied for this paper. A total of 142 students (89 males and 53 females, aged 22-37 years) participated in this study. The results identified several associations between design elements. The four most important PDEs found to influence consumers' decision to buy via the internet were graphics, colours, label information, and country of origin. This study provides the necessary insights into the design of product packaging by targeting aspects related to the appearance of the products' characteristics. Correlations between the various PDEs obtained from this study can be used to increase consumers' interactions with products in e-commerce environments.