Consumer Insight-Led Packaging Innovation for the Kids' Drinks Category
Explored unmet needs, behaviours, and decision drivers across parents and children to identify meaningful packaging innovation opportunities — without over-indexing on novelty in a highly competitive, regulated category.
The kids' drinks category is highly competitive, heavily regulated, and shaped by the overlapping — and often conflicting — priorities of children and their parents. Existing packaging solutions struggled to balance appeal, trust, and functional clarity across both audiences simultaneously. The challenge was to identify meaningful innovation opportunities grounded in real consumer behaviour, without falling into the trap of novelty for its own sake. The key risk was developing packaging concepts that appealed to one audience at the expense of the other — or that addressed surface-level aesthetic preferences rather than functional and emotional needs driving actual purchase and repeat behaviour.
Purchase decisions were primarily driven by legibility and perceived health credentials — playful aesthetics mattered only once trust thresholds were met.
Children engaged more strongly with packaging that felt interactive or gave them a sense of ownership — aesthetics alone were not enough to drive preference or sustained engagement.
Overcomplicated closures, graphics, and opening mechanisms created friction for both children and parents — reducing confidence in use and repurchase intent.
Multi-method research designed to capture both parent and child perspectives across the full purchase and consumption journey.
Co-creative sessions with parents and children to surface latent needs, associations, and desires around packaging — before preference patterns became rationalised.
Mapped the full journey from initial purchase decision through to consumption and disposal — identifying where packaging succeeded, failed, and created unexpected moments of friction or delight.
In-store observation and intercept research to understand how packaging performed in the actual decision environment — under real cognitive load, time pressure, and with competing options visible.
Design Researcher
Strategic frameworks and insight tools to align creative and technical teams around evidence-based innovation opportunities.
Framed clear innovation spaces grounded in unmet needs — giving the creative team defined territories to explore with confidence.
Mapped key moments in the purchase and consumption cycle where packaging had the greatest influence on behaviour and decision-making.
Defined how packaging needs and responses shifted across child age ranges — enabling more targeted, developmentally appropriate design decisions.
End-to-end journey maps capturing the parent and child experience from shelf to disposal — surfacing unmet needs and moments of friction across the full arc.
From consumer behaviour to clear innovation direction
Provided Coca-Cola with evidence-based opportunity spaces — moving the conversation from assumptions to insight-led direction.
Shared frameworks gave both creative and technical stakeholders a common reference point, reducing misalignment and accelerating concept development.
Research directly shaped the next phase of concept development and brand positioning decisions within the kids' drinks category.