PackageRepublic.com: Passion for Packaging Innovation
Sensory and Visual Appeal
Initially, we were positively impressed with the 유기농장 Organic Farm Rice stand-up pouch, especially considering how visual and sensory appeal elements are incorporated into this package. It looks great, feels great, and its matte finish perfectly matches the product’s organic image. (Simply, honest goodness can be conveyed with matte packaging real well for basic need foods.)
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There are a number of older and traditional cookie products on the market, like petit beurre, which are manufactured by a variety of brands and manufacturers. These are legacy products that have a loyal following, especially in Europe.
These products have been around for many decades. A good representative of this type of a cookie is Bahlsen Hit, which has been strongly branded in Europe. Bahlsen Hit has been around over two decades, and it has not seen a significant upgrade in packaging. Does the original packaging serves today’s needs?
Despite the cookie that is being packed gets easily crumbled, it is packed in rather thin film, with a corrugate around to prevent shipping and handling damage. Compared to other similar petit beurre products, which do not have additional corrugate protection, the corrugate is supposed to provide additional protection.
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ScienceDaily.com recently reported that engineers at the University of Florida have achieved a near perfect hydrophobic surface by looking at the physical structures of spider hair, and duplicating them mechanically. This approach differs from similar approaches in the past which tried to achieve the same results through material composition, not mechanical properties.
Hydrophobic surfaces are often seen in nature as evolutionary survival responses in frogs and spiders. These surfaces do not get wet. Instead, water curves around them. The breakthrough here is indeed making this possible through mechanical properties, which may make it applicable to packaging.
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Wired magazine is reporting that scientists from Sunchon National University and Rice University have developed a printable RFID tag.
The cost of the RFID tags were over $1/unit a decade ago. Back then, it was largely anticipated that in order for RFID to be fully deployed, the per unit cost needed to be at better than 5¢/unit. Despite its advantages, RFID competes against bar codes, which are printed on the package, as part of the graphic design, at almost no additional cost. The ultimate target was 1¢/unit.
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Gizmodo is reporting that Amazon has been shipping Western Digital hard drives in packages that are inadequate for proper protection under the frustration-free package program.
As big as Amazon is, and as admirable as the frustration-free initiative is, Amazon is no expert in basic package usability, or in transport testing. We do believe that they need to bring in people who have the right expertise.
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Grouping consumer insights into actionable sandboxes
Once the ethnographic research concludes, the team brings back a host of insights. Then, in a cross-functional set-up, the team members can sit around the table, and decide which of the hundreds of consumer insights complement each other, and which are not pertinent.
For example, years ago when we were doing ethnographic research for refrigerator innovation, we discovered that the consumer we were working with was storing chicken bones in his freezer after he consumed the chicken, until the garbage pick-up day, which occurred once a week. He did not want his garage to smell bad.
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Discovering consumer packaging needs and problems through ethnographic research
A common misconception about innovation is that if a company innovates a more usable product, or a better looking product, or improves on some attribute of a product, then it is an innovative product, and therefore it should succeed.
However, it often does not. The reason for that is addressing one factor among many consumer touch-points does not automatically translate into success as it may not rank high in consumers eyes in respect to some other touch-point.
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Segmentation for Considered Purchases
If you are buying a car, or an appliance, segmentation plays a very important part. For example, it would not be very surprising that BMW buyers are mostly men in their 40s. It would also be not so surprising to see that their income may be higher than average. As a result, BMW targets a certain demographic/segment. We can continue on with this example, but you probably already understand segmentation plays an important part in considered purchases.
Packaging Segmentation
How do you do package segmentation then, especially considering that the package itself is not the product. Typically, with high-value products, (i.e. an iPod) you can do segmentation on the product itself, and have the package match that segmentation.
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Vitality GlowCap, which has been around as a concept since 2007, recently is grabbing increasing attention. Now that Engadget is reporting a hands-on test, we felt that the time was right for an opinion piece on whether this is innovation or bust in packaging.
Remote Accessed Tags in Packaging
Among other technologies, RFID may be the stand-out technology that has been connected to packaging for remote sensing and information exchange. It has been around for a long time. Despite Walmart’s push some years back, RFID is yet to make a big impact on the consumer side in packaging. In the meantime, more and more sophisticated bar-code type formats have been emerging packing denser information to printed, machine readable codes. However, wireless and remotely accessed information is still on the horizon as a destination.
What Vitality does, however, is different than what RFID or similar technologies are targeting. It interacts with the consumer on an on-going basis to expedite taking medications.
1.5 Lt. Juice Packages (Europe)
In the second article of the Package Death-Match series we will be comparing 1.5 liter fruit juice packages from the European market.
The three packages we chose, even visually imply diverse handling characteristics that we want to compare. Naturally, beyond handling, we also compared opening, pouring and closing.
Appearance
Both carton and plastic containers are well known solutions in the European market, mostly in the “liter and above” size category.
