How Much Does a Label & Brand Name Influence Our Perceptions About Beauty Products? My Blind Haircare Experience

Given that I have spent over twenty years of my professional career as a focus group moderator, talking to consumers about products, advertising, marketing and branding, I was thrilled when I was invited to participate in a very unique beauty product review experience as a blogger. While I review and test beauty products all the time for brands and pr firms, I have never had the opportunity to participate in an unbranded beauty product trial experience. What that that means in simple terms is that I was sent a package of haircare products for my hair type (fine & dry) of plain unbranded or labeled products in a pretty box like this

Each product was simply labeled on the bottom of the package with an S for Shampoo, a C for Conditioner and an A for Styling Aid along with simple instructions for usage. I was also told that this these products could be found at mass retailers like a drugstore/Walmart and that these products are infused with secret hair nourishing ingredients. I was asked to test out these products for a week and then share my experience on my blog. So here goes!

My Initial Thoughts:

I was excited about participating in such a cool social experiment because it is a convergence of my two careers
The market researcher in me was intrigued about the idea of being a respondent in a blind study
Once the package arrived and I took out the unmarked, unlabeled hair product packages, I began to realize how much we rely on packaging to shape our product experiences
Branding, advertising and package labels strongly impact our perceptions about products before we ever actually try them – I was looking for cues and clues about these products that were not there
I found it really interesting how much I missed the label to guide me on usage, smell and the product benefits
I began to realize that trying a product blindly truly allows you to TRY the product and really experience it without being influenced by the marketing messages
I tried to guess what mass brand I thought it might be, but since so many mass brands have really upped their quality and ingredients in recent years, I was stumped!

My Product Trial/Reactions to using these Products:

I initially liked the fresh, clean floral smell of these products – they smelled a bit more decadent than your typical mass products
I loved how frothy, yet nourishing the shampoo was and found that it easily cleaned my hair and removed build up
The shampoo felt richer and more nourishing than your typical mass shampoo, in other words the texture felt more expensive
The conditioner had a lightweight, but very moisturizing formula and my hair seemed to drink it up
After I towel dried my hair, it felt surprisingly soft and moist which is not always the case with mass hair products which tend to make your hair feel drier/straw-like
The biggest surprise in my blind trial was the Styling Aid, which I would describe as a volumizing styling mousse – in all honesty I have not used a foaming/mousse-like product on my hair in years because in my experience they tend to make my hair stiff and dry
I applied about 3 pumps of this lightweight airy styling aid to the roots and then ends of my towel-dried hair and it absorbed instantly and my hair felt soft, not sticky
While blow drying my hair, I noticed that this product gave my fine hair a nice amount volume/lift without weighing it down
But it was the moisture and shine that I found the most surprising about this product – this innovative neo-hair mousse made my hair look healthy and shiny, not dry or stiff

The Results/My Final Thoughts

Here’s a pic of my fab blowdry and my hair looking healthy, full and radiant after using these haircare products (and the professional make-up doesn’t hurt either 😉 )

What do you think? Pretty fab, right! And with only a splash of hairspray, it held the style all day!
I couldn’t get over the soft texture and shine that these products delivered – very surprising results from a mass product
I realized that I really do tend to rely on reading the package to tell me about product benefits to shape my perceptions before, during and after using a product
Using these products blindly allowed me to really tune into how these products actually worked for my hair, rather than making assumptions based on the brand name and product label
Brand names, labels and product benefits play a much more significant role on haircare product perceptions than I ever imagined
I really enjoyed this blind hair product trial and look forward to revealing the ‘brand secret’ in an upcoming post, stay tuned!