After learning about the potential benefits of including retrieval cues on a product's packaging for stimulating memory of its advertising, a company modified its packaging to include a scene from one of its current commercials. To its dismay, doing this didn't seem to help much because sales were unaffected. How might one explain the apparent ineffectiveness of this retrieval cue?

After learning about the potential benefits of including retrieval cues on a product's packaging for stimulating memory of its advertising, a company modified its packaging to include a scene from one of its current commercials.  To its dismay, doing this didn't seem to help much because sales were unaffected.  How might one explain the apparent ineffectiveness of this retrieval cue?

Normally, people see the advertisement, they will store it in either their short term or long term memory .But, due to decay theory, and memories on the advertisement grow weaker with the passage of time. For company then have to think of several strategies to help consumer to retrieve the advertisement memory from their long term memory. One of the strategies is to use the power of packaging.A successful packaging will help consumer to increase their strength of linkages between the to-be-remembered item and other memory nodes such as advertisement information. However, not all the packaging can effectively stimulate the memory of the advertisement  from it memory.There are several reason state below.

Firstly,the picture or art-work that is used in the packaging are just normal appeal and it does not really touch people attention. Something unattractive will not grab the attention of many as they pass by. Furthermore, the packaging does not have any strong image associated with the current commercial. Therefore, even if consumer can remember the picture or art-work but they hardly link to the current commercial that is done by the company. So, they are hardly retrieving their memory of the advertisement. In the end, they will not consumer the product.

Next,using a wrong colour for the packaging. Dull colour will often lead to the packaging become unattractive toward s consumer. If the packaging is not using any eye-catching colour, it will hardly get consumer attention toward the product. Less attractive colour will lead to consumer ignore the product or not even retrieve the memory of the advertisement?

Lastly,packaging is not unique and very common. Therefore, people hardly getting any attention toward the product. They may just see the product but will not really have any impressive over the product or packaging. In addition, some packaging is ugly and it is distasteful toward most of the consumer, therefore they will try to avoid or do not want to see the product due to the packaging. Overall, less memory toward the product packaging will then  hardly have the image association toward  the current advertisement.    

In conclusion, attractive and unique packaging will usually grab more customer attention and higher chance for people to strengthen the image association toward the advertisement. Therefore, it can effectively help consumer to retrieve the information of the advertisement from their long term memory.