What's In A Package Thomas Hine Analysis

Have you ever thought how much research and effort a company has done to make their product appeal to you? A company will conduct surveys, record human responses to specific images, and adhere to government regulations not to mention all the different designs produced, just so that you will want to buy their product over their competitors. In Thomas Hine’s essay, What’s in a Package, Hine discusses the great length the response that a consumer should have when looking at a product’s packaging, the importance of manufactures’ marketing campaign, the importance of packages depending on the culture, then finally to why designs will change over time.
Walking down the aisle of a supermarket is how Thomas Hine begins his original argument on how

packages can evoke an involuntary emotional or nostalgic response. Instead of the old fashion market place where you might have people trying to pitch their product to you, now the packages are taking their role. For example, if you want a natural hand moisturizer, all you will need to do is look for a product with a green leaf or beige colored bottle. These images will depict nature with the implication of telling you that natural products are used rather than laboratory formed chemicals. However, with the hundreds of packages that we see every day, not only in the supermarket but also at home, how would one stand out? Well the answer is that these new “packages embody change, not just in their old-age promise that their content s are new and improved, but in their attempt to respond to changing tastes and achieve new standards of convenience.” (Hine 115) With our consistently changing culture, these packages have to embrace this culture and show the consumer that they are staying up to date with or ahead of the current cultural trend.