CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1           BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

The topic of this research work is “The consumer’s perception of branding and packaging on sales of cosmetics products”.

The American marketing association defines a brand as a name, term, design, symbol or any feature that identifies one seller’s goods or services as distinct from those of other sellers. The legal term for brand is trademark. A brand may identify one item a family of items or all items of that seller. According to Oswald (2002), it used for the firm as a whole, the preferred term is trade name.

A brand can take many forms including a name, sign, symbol, colour, combination or slogan. The word branding began simply as a way to tell one person’s cattle from another by means of hot iron stamp. The word brand has continued to evolve to encompass identify its affects the personality of a product, company or service.

A concept brand is a brand that is associated with an abstract concept like breast cancer awareness or environmentalism, rather than a specific product, service or business. A commodity brand is a associated with commonly golf milk, is an example of a commodity brand in the automatic industry, brand were originally called morgues and morgues are still often used as a synonym for brand in reference to motor vehicles (Leech, 2005). The word brand is sometimes used as a metonym, referring to a company that is strongly identified with a brand. Packaging is the science, art, technology of enclosing or protecting of products for distribution, storage, sales and use. Packaging also refers to the process of design, evaluation and production of packages. Packaging can be described as a coordinated system of preparing goods for transport, warehousing, logistics, sale and end-use. Packaging also refers to the process of design, evaluation and production of packages. Packaging can be described as a coordinated system of preparing goods for transport, warehousing, logistics, sales and end-use.

Higgins (2003), pointed that packaging contains, protects, preserves, in forms and sells. In many countries it is fully integrated into government, business, institutional, industrial and personal use. Packager labeling (en-GB) or labeling (en-US) is any written electronic or graphic communications but associated label.

The researcher decided to use Onitsha main market cosmetic trades as his case study for this work. He will attempt to find out how the consumers perception of branding and packaging affects the sale of their cosmetic products.