At one time through the first half of the twentieth century, products such as chocolates were packaged and marketed based on their utility and intrinsic value. Then in the second half of the century researchers began to suggest that products could also be sold for their symbolic value. Now in the new millennium the symbolic paradigm is increasingly becoming a primary packaging focus.
Service-dominant Logic
The concept that every exchange is based on the application of knowledge and skills is called "service-dominant (S-D) logic." One of the main shifts in marketing this century has been toward S-D logic, in which service has played a role in defining or redefining products. This idea parallels another major shift in marketing, in which multiple players within an ecosystem now contribute to the use of symbols to sell both products and services.
Through collaboration, a team works together on cocreation of value and meaning to arrive at manufacturing, marketing, packaging and branding decisions. This emerging approach to how products and services are sold draws from the principles of service exchange, resource integration, value cocreation and the study of human consciousness. An important layer of this new paradigm presumes that customers who benefit from service exchange contribute to value creation through their feedback on the way they consume products and services.
Essentially, this new paradigm redefines goods as intermediaries instead of the primary foundation of value creation. The big picture becomes a field of actors who represent a network, such as an integrated circle of firms, partners, vendors and consumers. Knowledge and skills are exchanged at multiple levels in order to work as a dynamic ecosystem that delivers products to consumers.
Role of Symbols in Value Cocreation
Symbols must be explained in relation to practices and institutions since each of these elements shape how people judge value. Perhaps it's easiest to understand symbols and practical merchandise as the total package that consumers seek, regardless of the item. Starting in the late 1950s, marketing began its shift in emphasis from utilitarian to symbolic meanings of brands and products. Marketers began to sell symbols through various channels, following challenges to traditional marketing philosophy made by the very influential consumer researcher Sidney Levy.
Levy viewed a symbol as a general term that reflects any given word, object, picture or action as having potentially various meanings that point to other ideas or feelings beyond themselves. For the purposes of studying value cocreation, subsequent theories have suggested that actors may assign meanings to signs that can be used as symbols. Crafted symbols can be constructed within rules set by institutions and must coordinate with practices within ecosystems in order for assigned meanings to be interpreted correctly.
Studying the relationship between signs and practices is a step toward improving packaging for chocolates, confectionery and a multitude of other products. Marketers and designers must always keep in mind the reality of overlapping interpretations of symbols across different cultures, as well as the fact that certain subcultures may have completely unique interpretations of symbols that marketers may overlook.
How Symbols Guide Value Cocreation
Resource integration is a major key to value cocreation in a service ecosystem. This integration is shaped by institutions that set the framework and rules for actors to follow in the cocreation process. A further layer of influence is an undertone of social norms that result from the culmination of injecting cultural symbols, assumptions, values and beliefs that resonate with consumers into the marketing machine. In other words, institutions shape the system that shapes marketing that shapes culture, which ultimately feeds its judgement back into the system.
The cocreation process allows customer feedback to affect executives to rethink the symbols that are applied to packaging. In that sense, cocreation contributes to the evolution of a product and doesn't necessarily dictate the predictable future of a product. Cultural values are always subject to change over time, otherwise it wouldn't be necessary to continue researching social trends.
Many symbols, however, are deeply engrained in culture, especially those that relate to traditional values. In recent years, however, the concept of sustainability has influenced both the business world and consumers to elevate it to the level of a value that can be expressed through symbols, such as the colour green or a picture of a globe. Such symbols instantly resonate across the spectrum of cocreators and likely trigger similar interpretations.
At the same time, symbolic meanings vary from culture to culture and even within institutional levels. That's why targeting and branding must work together in order to achieve the full effect of capturing the attention of consumers in specific market segments. Ultimately, the interpretation of symbols is what drives value cocreation, with the understanding that new symbolic meanings are constantly emerging. The concept that the same word or object means something different to every individual mind that perceives it must be taken into account.
Conclusion
Cocreation is a process that involves many players that comprise managers, designers, supply chain partners and consumers identifying with symbols that translate into values. Symbols have become the core of marketing and therefore play a major role in packaging design. In order to gain a competitive edge, marketers need to look deeper into how signs and symbols mirror the integration of ecosystems, social norms and cultural values of their targeted customer groups.
