During May and June, Packworld.com conducted a survey that drew 240 respondents that asked, “What are the issues when considering bilingual packaging?”.
Although the most common issue raised related to space constraints, the verbatim comments addressed a variety of issues. Here are some of them:
“It is currently a must for all foodservice items and is becoming increasingly important.”—marketer for major foods company.
“Any product that is marketed to U.S. consumers should be labeled in Spanish.”—marketer for medium-sized chemical products company in the Midwest.
“It is mandatory by some retailers. Try using more photos and less wording.”—marketer for industrial products.
“We use 18 languages to cover the world.”—packaging manager for major medical/pharmaceutical company.
“Primary trade-off is space for visual impact and legibility, which especially affects us as a maker of nutritional supplements as we have to display a lot of copy anyway.”—West Coast marketing manager.
“The hard part is what seems to be different translations, and having people [qualified] to proofread them.”—chemical products R&D in the Northeast.
“We are actually trilingual with French language for Canada.”—plant manager for international chemical products company in the Southeast.
“We use point-of-purchase materials printed in Spanish for markets with a high concentration of Spanish-speaking consumers.”—packaging manager for tobacco products.
“The sales value of the package diminishes when you lose display panel space to words.”—purchasing engineer for major supermarket chain.
“I believe Spanish is a requirement for U.S. products.”—engineer for nonfood consumer products company.
“Bilingual packaging increases the opportunity for export.”
—food company R&D.
“Dual language graphics tend to confuse U.S. consumers.”
—beverage company R&D.
See the story that goes with this sidebar: Bilingual packaging: ¿Qué pasa?
