consumer

Designing packaging for sustainability

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Working towards sustainability means package designs that acknowledge and respond to the larger system that the product/package is a part of. A package is integral to that broader system, and part of the big system’s sustainability.

A design that merely does not worsen the system’s sustainability is not a breakthrough. And packaging pursuing only its own greenness is missing the chance to help the whole system.

The leading edge of packaging design often falls short. Designers recognize the centrality of sustainability. But they often work with a narrow perspective vis-a-vis the wider total lifecycle and contextual reality of the package. More often than not, the view is too narrow, focused on a simple substitution; “Do it with a renewable material”. 

Another narrow-view solution is finding a secondary use for the package. That is not enough. In most contexts, there will be too many waste packages for the secondary use opportunity. We cannot turn all PET soda bottles into jackets and pullovers.

How can designers and brands work together to come up with solutions?

Each side knows much the other does not. Joining brand owner experts with designers and innovators can move designs to the next level. This means joint explorations of possibility taking a whole systems view, understanding emerging change, learning together, and finding inspiration from parallel and distant situations. For example, drawing on nature, harking back to old approaches, and discovering things from other cultures all can inform and inspire design thinking.

Are consumers really demanding change? 

Designers and innovators should know what consumers want. But they also often have to lead and educate consumers for the need for change. On the old question of technology push versus market pull, the answer is, both.

More consumers live where there are tightening requirements for sustainability, limiting, recovering, and recycling waste. Brand owners’ choices in packaging may hand the consumer a waste problem. A consumer may not make a personal choice for more sustainable packaging. But if their community requires something, it’s part of their daily lives anyway.

How do you balance sustainable design with a better consumer experience?

Work to make sustainability itself par of the consumer experience and do it well.

What role does education play with consumers when designing for sustainability?

It is central. To be able to educate the consumer about sustainability while also handing them a solution that works in their lives is the pathway to success.

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We bring this kind of thinking to our triennial Future of Packaging program. It’s a multi-sponsor program for packaging executives and others with a strong interest in packaging. For more about the program, visit Future of Packaging: 2030. Our program launches at the beginning of 2019.

#Consumer4Sight No. 9: Wants to play

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For more in this series, see #Consumer4sight

Domino's makes pizza buying fun with an iPad game, Pizza Hero

The future consumer wants to play: with you and with her friends. That means having more options, choices, new experiences, and interaction with you, your products, systems, and services. It means variety and fun in the course of using a product or service and engaging with a company. We have come to talk about “gamification” in this context. That means that a system or user experience is made more like a game, with interaction, puzzles to solve, players to compete with, rewards and “levels” along the way.

A key driver of this new consumer expectation is digitally-enabled interactivity. We’ve already set new standards for engagement with technology, e.g. with i-devices and even with Siri, the voice recognizing iPhone agent. Technology is also making this possible with non-electronic products, since any product or brand can have associated apps. More consumers will look for the chance to interact and play.

The bottom line for business  – Interactivity and engagement are essential for consumers. There will always be products that are used without much thought, e.g. trash bags, but the sense of fun and the positive possibilities for it for business can come just about anywhere. If a product cannot be interactive and fun, maybe the buying experience, or the ads for it can be. Consumers increasingly crave variety and interest, and reward the companies that offer it.

Here’s a nice example: Dodge, to promote its Journey model, hid cars around the world, offering clues for people to find them. The first to find one of the cars got to keep it.

i-device enabled consumer life is more and more app-driven. That means with a service or access to a product, such as through a store’s app, there are ways to build in fun. The goal is to enchant the consumer and build interest and loyalty. And there’s plenty of room for more fun in the consumer marketplace.

#Consumer4sight no. 7: Citizen of the world

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Slumdog Millionaire opened up Indian pop culture to a much bigger North American audience

Consumers have gone global too. The consumer increasingly is and feels like a citizen of the world, at least as far as media, food, fashion and other consumer tastes are concerned. Globalization means big things for big systems like trade, and everyday things for many consumers. More of us are partaking of products, ideas, trends, and cultural elements from some other part of the world. For example, Bangra music from India blends with American Rap, and shawarmas have become a lunch staple in US towns where the average consumer may not even know what continent they’re from. Technology is enabling this: it’s rendering geography irrelevant or at least differently relevant and giving us instant access to ideas and products from other places.

For more in this series, see #Consumer4sight

The bottom line for business: the consumer wants variety, and the world is now his or her consumption playground. If you don’t help them find new and interesting products and experiences from around our world, someone else will. And Western companies especially need a wake-up call: they are no longer the font of product innovation, nor do they have a guaranteed spot in the pantheon of global brands—new brands and products are emerging from the emerging markets, and that trend will accelerate.

#Consumer4sight No 6: Greening it up by choice or by force

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More consumers are greening it up – Soon regulatory and social pressures will meet economic pressures to drive greener lifestyles. People are already subject to local recycling laws and often laws relating to their use of energy and water resources. But higher prices are an even surer way to wake up consumers to the need to conserve, reuse, etc. And shifts in consumer values are, at least for some, in the direction of less material consumption, but you don't have to care about the earth to be greening up your lifestyle. The bottom line for business. Though it’s not a majority of consumers who are acting on green values as they consume, plenty are. And sometimes the green option is the choice when two choices are otherwise about equal. It's also critical to get ahead of evolving regulation on matters of sustainability. Playing catch-up is expensive. At some point a company’s overall profile is a critical brand attribute, and if that profile looks anti-green in the marketplace, that company loses. Sustainable practices will be an integral part of corporate processes and a prominent brand matter. And the sustainability bar is regularly raised, as we gain knowledge and awareness of what matters. Image: photologue_np, via Flickr cc attribution license

#Consumer4sight No. 4: Continuous digital access is becoming the core of consumer life

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From the series, #Consumer4sight

Living a digital life means carrying a mobile device that gives people ubiquitous access to the ‘net. Most well-off people have that and far more have basic mobile communications with at least texting (SMS) capability. And with that is the power of social networking, which changes the dynamics of what people do while connected. Network access, instant information, and social connections will be part of nearly everything people do. In their consumer lives, they will be essential tools and powerful influencers of what people want and buy. New information tools and channels will submerge traditional media—and advertising, in a cacophony of new, powerful influences.

The bottom line for business. Selling will be about tapping into social networks, harnessing buzz, finding what resonates with specific groups. You will need to find consumers in the cloud—you can’t wait for them to enter your store, whether that’s a brick and mortar building or a website. Consumers will become even more “brand fickle”—the forces of digital communications, social networks, and the pace of change in the marketplace move them off of long-term brand loyalty. You will be able to win over consumers to your products, but it will be hard to keep them. Image: philcampbell via Flickr, Creative Commons attribution license See prior #consumer4sight posts here: https://foresightculture.com/category/consumer4sight/

A 2021 shopper’s path to purchase

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Technology and social changes are transFuture Pathway to Purchaseforming how we shop. The future path to purchase won’t look like the traditional one—in fact, our path to purchase has already changed strikingly as retailing and consumer life have changed. But we’ve only begun to see what will unfold.

Retailers, CPGs, packaging developers and others up and down the consumer value chain need to grapple with the changes and be ready to do new things in new ways. Fundamentals of the retailing business: store sizes, formats, technology, locations, distribution channels, and so on, will have to be reconsidered in the coming decade.

What might the future path to purchase look like? Here is a scenario for 2021:

Claire is 32 years old, and lives in Boston. Work keeps her busy and mobile—she puts in about 60 hours a week at two jobs—and she spends a lot of time in her car for work, in Boston traffic. She likes to shop, but doesn’t have time to spend going to stores as much as she likes. So Claire relies on shopping virtually. Hers is an app-driven life, and shopping is no different.

This week, Claire bought a new sweater and blouse. Here’s how she did it.

First, Claire noticed on SocialShare that sixteen of her friends had “Liked” a new young designer’s collection. She looked at pictures of Marteen’s designs and a video of the designer talking about his work, but then thought no more about it as work distractions took hold. [“Likes” and buzz]

Later, when she was out with her friends, Becca’s blouse caught her eye—she asked about it—it was that same designer, Marteen. She really liked the blouse, and Becca let her take a quick photo with her mobile. “Don’t get this same color!” said Becca. [see and image]

That Sunday, she used the ShopNow! app to find the blouse—it recognized the brand and model from her smartphone picture. Right away it showed five stores in the Boston area that had the designs, but Claire realized she wouldn’t get out to shop that weekend or the next. But she kept thinking about the blouse. [app finds it]

So Claire decided to send “Digital Claire” shopping. Digital Claire has all her sizes and preferences, and what she had bought in the past two years. It checked the fit, and narrowed her choices from the collection. But the app found that the blouse Becca had really would not fit Claire. And to make things worse, it also showed her a gorgeous sweater that didn’t fit either. [avatar match]

Disappointed, she checked whether she could order a custom blouse in the same style. Using Digital Claire, she priced a custom-fit version, and previewed colors. She had her avatar try on the blouse and a sweater from Marteen’s collection, and showed Becca the 3D views. The blouse and sweater could be made to her specs and delivered the next day, Monday. The chance to have it immediately was exciting—she could wear it Tuesday. SOLD! [auto order custom version/produced per order/delivered]

NOTE: I offer keynote talks and workshops on the future consumer and the future of retail, contact me at jbmahaffie@leadingfuturists.biz for more information

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