Provided by Research Papers in Economics
Packaging: A Key Element in Added Value
by
Susan B. Bassin
Principal, King-Casey, Inc.
New Canaan, CT
It certainly is a pleasure to be with you
today here in historic Williamsburg, Virginia,
and an honor to participate in this year’s
conference on People Adding Value to Food
Distribution. I’ll be talking about "Packaging:
A Key Element in Added Value." All of us
here are concerned with packaging in some
way--my firm as designer, some of you as
manufacturers, others of you in wholesale and
retail establishments who stock and sell these
packages, and those of you from universities
who help us all understand the trends better.
But while we study, observe, and determine
changes in packaging, the consumer is some-
times totally mystified by what we do. Here,
two consumers, Frank and Ernest, learned
about DPP in their recent trip to the grocery
store. As the checkout clerk explains, "The
manufacturer had to raise the price on that
item to pay for the cost of switching to a
smaller package." So today I want to take
the consumer’s part--helping us to understand
his or her problems and how we can make
packaging solve them.
Historically, packaging’s main function,
or added-value, was to contain the food.
Maybe it’s our trip here to historic Williams-
burg that reminds me that it wasn’t so long
ago that primary food packages were burlap
bags, barrels, and, if you were lucky, glass
apothecary jars for peppermint sticks. These
early packages served primarily to contain the
food. The consumer was served the amount
he wanted into a secondary package, often a
sack or paper bag. Then this food was carried
home and put into another container—like a
flour canister or flour bin.
It wasn’t long after that that preserva-
tion became another value added by packaging.
In 1795, Nicholas Appert, French chef, won
the French government’s prize for developing
a simple way to preserve food for the French
army--boiling water and glass bottles--a pro-
cess still with us today. Here, we have the
1858 refinement by John Mason shown contain-
ing some 1987 vintage apple butter!
But times are more complex now. All
consumers assume that a package is going to
contain and preserve food. So, today’s modern
food package must do more. Here are five
value-added functions for today’s consumer:
1. Brand Identification
2. Advertising at the Point-Of-Purchase
3. Product Transport
4. At-Home Storage
5. Task Assistance
But before talking about these avenues
to added-value packaging, let’s talk about the
consumer.
Consumers are busy these days—always
in a hurry—with too much to do. Fifteen
years ago, shopping was fun; now it is just
another chore, and the average supermarket
shopping trip has dropped from an hour to 20
minutes. While women are still the main
supermarket shoppers, men now account for 40
percent of all food dollars, up dramatically
February 88/page 6
Journal of Food Distribution Research