Portray Freshness in CPGs

People are pretty much feeling okay about containers for consumer packaged goods (CPGs). A recent Marketing Daily posting, based on a Packaged Facts survey, reports that only 1% to 2% of American consumers surveyed expressed overall dissatisfaction with the packages for most products. The highest degree of dissatisfaction expressed in the survey—for breakfast cereal, snack chip, cookie, and salad containers—was just 5%.
     Still, low amounts of overall consumer dissatisfaction leave plenty of opportunities for you to distinguish your store by attending to areas in which consumers do see a need for improvements. The survey research suggests one way is to portray freshness.

• Packages you carry on your shelves which include green in the label are more likely to be perceived as fresh. Show consumers from throughout the world green product packaging and you'll probably hear descriptions like new, organic, healthy, and refreshing. If the packages themselves don’t have green, you can use green in the signage or even on the shelf tags. The freshness appeal of green is stronger when the store environment is tidy and there is a scent of pine. 
• With elderly consumers, a smaller package size for perishable products is associated with freshness. Perishable products can spoil too quickly if the customer is no longer living with a full family. Another freshness feature important to senior citizen shoppers is the ease of securely closing a container when the remaining contents are to be used later. And have intact packaging from the beginning. Frequent complaints about meat and poultry in the Packaged Facts survey concerned containers which were leaky. 
• With consumers who aren’t elderly or disabled, a package which is challenging to open signals freshness. In a classic study based at University of Texas-Arlington, researchers found that potato chips in a difficult-to-open polyvinyl bag were preferred to potato chips in an easy-to-open wax-coated bag. The chips were actually all from the same batch. 
• With parents of younger children, the ways in which the package maintains freshness makes a difference. In the Packaged Facts survey, a common complaint about soups and related items was the use of bisphenol A (BPA) in the container. BPA has been identified as a toxin of particular danger to growing children. If you sell this product category in BPA-free packaging, be sure to let consumers know. 
• Rotate out of the shelves, CPGs for which the expiration date has come and gone. 

Click below for more: 
Hook Going Green to the Excitement of Nature 
Downsize for Elderly Shoppers 
Leverage Barriers to Increase Value 
Purge Expired Products