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Consumer megatrends and packaging: a quantitative study

In this summary of consumer trends research, the author looks at 10 consumer trends to see how effectively packaging professionals are assessing and reacting to the trends.

Table 1
Table 1

 

According to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, U.S. consumers spent more than $10 trillion in 2012. This spending was made across billions of individual transactions and influenced by a wide array of dynamics. How well any company or product does in the market is based on how successfully it understands and embraces (and even helps form) these dynamics. Research into what consumers need and want is useful to improve the odds of winning more transactions and garnering a greater share of wallet.
 
In 2011, Berlin Packaging published a white paper titled “Consumer Megatrends and Packaging Implications: How Companies Can Ride Consumers’ Coattails.” It identified consumer motivations and how values, behaviors, and attitudes translated into overarching consumer trends. That paper was a qualitative review of literature and prior research, and it presented a set of trends and broad packaging implications.
 
The study presented here, on the other hand, takes the research 
one step further and works to quantitatively assess, through a broad-based survey of packaging professionals, the lifestage of each trend (whether it is on the rise or in decline), the adoption rate of each trend (whether companies are reacting to the trend), and the packaging tactics 
being used.
 
Methodology and approach
 
Berlin Packaging surveyed thousands of packaging professionals in December, 2012. The survey was conducted using a web-based research tool called SurveyMonkey. Berlin received 1,097 survey responses. Respondents cut across many different industries (Table 1) and many different roles (Table 2).
 
The survey centered on ten consumer megatrends (Table 3). Respondents commented on each megatrend in three ways (Figure 1):
• Momentum: Placing the megatrend in its lifecycle stage.
• 
Adoption: Selecting to what degree the respondent’s company is reacting to the megatrend.
• 
Packaging Tactics: Within the megatrends that were being adopted, identifying the packaging tactics being used.
 
Results
Results were analyzed in three steps. The first step independently assessed consumer momentum and company adoption for overall respondent feelings on the existence of trends and activity. The second step looked at the relationship between momentum and adoption responses and built an Intensity Matrix for each trend. The third step distilled these matrices and located the “center of gravity” for each trend; this simplifies how the data are shown and helps with synthesizing implications.
 
Step 1
 
The vast majority of respondents see each of these trends as having momentum to one degree or another. Table 4 shows the lifestage in which respondents place each trend. For example, just 3% of respondents see the Rise of Boomers Megatrend as Nonexistent, while 64% see it as thriving.
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