Investigation on the Effect of Pictorial Packaging Elements with the Mental Image of the Brand in Customers of One of the Dairy Companies of Gorgan City

In recent decades, consumer packaging and its applications have gradually been taken into consideration, today packaging is a key factor in product sales, and companies focus on increasing their competitive edge. Usually the first factor that consumers see during shopping is the product packaging, so the underlying element is the success of a product in the marketplace. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of pictorial packaging elements with the mental image of the brand among the customers of one of the dairy companies in Gorgan city. The research method in this descriptive-survey research is a correlation type. The statistical population of this study is all customers of dairy products company in Gorgan, whose number is considered unlimited due to its uncertainty. The number of samples according to Krejcie and Morgan's tables were 384 people. A simple random sampling method was used and a data gathering tool was a questionnaire. The Cronbach's alpha coefficient of all questions in the questionnaire was higher than 0.7. Structural equation modeling based on Lisrel software has been used to analyze the data. The results showed that the primary hypothesis of this study, namely the effect of pictorial packaging elements on the mental image of the brand, was confirmed. The secondary hypothesis of this research including the effect of the packaging form, packaging color and belief in the brand on the brand identity, were confirmed, but the hypothesis of the packaging form was not confirmed by the belief in the brand.