Structural analysis of childrens personal care products packaging designs

Packages are so much integrated into peoples? daily lives that most of the time no one is aware of their importance at the point of sale and while using them. The first examples of packages, which became the active sales tools for every sector, include soap and cosmetics packagings. From past to present, cosmetics sector expanded both with its target audience and product varieties. Recently, a new group is included into the target audience by the marketers. At the point of entrance to the market, with products developed for the target audience called `tween? who are 8-12 years old and form the basis of the child group, designers do not have the necessary information in order to communicate effectively with this target audience so that as a result tweens cannot find proper products for themselves. In order to overcome this, design and marketing professionals have to perceive the consumer behaviour by learning the dominant and using the emergent codes of the cultures. Communicating effectively with target audience does not only depend on gathering design elements onto a surface but having a conceptual background. In this case, semiotic analysis gains importance both for analyzing the present designs and developing creative ones. This method determines the world of signs in the cultures products belong, decode the hidden meanings and encode messages. The focus here is on `texts? not on consumers, through culture and communication. For this reason, this method gains importance by creating cultural awareness in order to perceive the hidden meanings consumers develop. On the contrary to general communication theories, the production of meanings through signs is important in this study. Methodology is applied to design elements-packaging-consumer relations while marketing communication keeps its importance. As a result; the necessity of analysis of childrens cosmetics packaging designs by creating a common language is presented.