Go slow on that green packaging proposal
May 18, 2009 by Tom GuayPosted in: In this week's e-newsletter, Latest News & Views, News
When it comes to going green with packaging, be cautious. Green is a secondary concern to most of your customers.
Green is great and can be a deal maker, but the first priority is, of course, function. Does the packaging protect the product? If not, then the green aspects of your package are lost on the customer.
Don’t discount the value of greenness. Green is a tie-breaker between two products of relatively equal values. But don’t rely on “green” too much.
That’s the cautionary tale from Scott Young, president of Perception Research Services, a packaging consulting firm that specializes in understanding how end users react to packaging systems.
For starters, don’t call your packaging or product “sustainable.” If it’s indeed green, call it “green” or “environmentally friendly” or maybe “eco-something.”
Reason: Fewer than 20% of consumers understand what “sustainability” means, according to research conducted by Perception in the U.S., Germany, the U.K. and China.
Nearly 50% of 500 people interviewed confused sustainability with durability. One defined “sustainable” as a package that will stay around forever because it’s not biodegradable. Those interviewed also revealed mass confusion as to the relative “green” merits of recycling glass, plastic or metal.
Young’s research is published in Design Management Review. His article is here.
Tags: environmentally friendly, green packaging, recycling, sustainability
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