Packaging as a purchase determinanton the dietary supplement market in Poland

Unit packaging of dietary supplements - an inherent element of their manufacturing, without which they would be impossible to market — has numerous interlocking functions to fulfil, including the protective, transport, information, functional, ecological and marketing functions. The information function, however, is one of the priority functions of dietary supplement packaging. In the era of the continual development of online and self-service stores (including pharmacies), such packaging has become one of the key sources of information about dietary supplements' features and properties, while also serving as a brand image creator and a carrier of promotional information. This raises the questions of whether and to what extent the unit packaging of dietary supplements influences the purchasing decisions of consumers, what features and elements of such packaging are crucial for consumers in the purchasing process, and what significance supplement packaging has in the purchasing process against the background of other purchasing determinants. Seeking to address these questions, herein we present selected results of an original study conducted in 2019 with a purposely selected sample of 468 dietary supplement consumers in Poland, whose main purpose was to identify the role and significance of packaging as a determinant of purchase in relation to three selected categories of dietary supplements.