A recent poll by packaginstrategies.com clearly maps out how consumers are becoming very involved with the idea of convenience.
In the poll, fully 54% of the magazine’s readership found “packaging designed for easier handling” and “the convenience of single use packaging” to be growing trends in the packaging sector.
Only 13% of those polled saw “multi-use, bulk packaging for cost savings” as an identifiable trend, which seems to indicate a shift away from the idea that cost is the most important value for a product.
Finally, 34% of respondents indicated Reused and / or recycled packaging for sustainable brands as a trend.
Interestingly, if you add up the percentage results on sustainability and cost, they are still less than the 54% of convenience.
This could be because when it comes to convenience, there is more than meets the eye.
The success of any product hinges on how efficiently it can solve a consumer’s problem. Convenience can only be present if the problem is actually solved. Once a manufacturer has a good handle on what it takes to solve the customer’s problem, creating convenience can then enhance the product.
An integral part of convenience is clarity. The main benefit of the product has to be clear, and the secondary messaging has to line up tightly with it. It won’t help to dilute your messaging with how great the product is. The messaging has to be about how the customer will solve their problem.
Clarity is also about how easily the consumer understands the product’s function. The clearer the function and the simpler the message, the better your product stands out on the shelf.
Sounds simple but it’s not, of course. A product is also made up of industry requirements, retailers’ and distributors’ pricing and packaging requirements and more, which add levels of difficulty to your product’s creation (please let us know if you need help on any of those subjects, by the way).
So perhaps “convenience” is not a trend at all, but rather a manifestation of what customers have always needed from their product: For it to be simple and to work.
