when packaging & services look the same for e commerce, what will make the difference?

5 tips to explore about packaging with the pre-requisite that packaging fits for purpose in term of performance:

1- Think differently: everyone speaks about it but do we really think differently? answer is usually no! packaging industry provide the same products, the same services and same solutions because we think the same and use same insights/ trends to anticipate our customer’s needs. This is too late: we should think about drivers and not trends. For example: e commerce is a fact, ecommerce packaging a need and every packaging company works on it in term of easy to use, easy to return …. What should we do if we really thought differently? Ecommerce packaging comes to an end, what will be next : omnichannel packaging.

2-     Resist to easy cost saving: when something goes wrong we think cost saving!  easy saving as travel cost/ cost of sales/ cost negotiation are usually the first thing that company activates: is it correlated with long term results? wouldn’t be more beneficial to think about efficiency than cost saving? Again in the ecom business: preferring plastic bags instead of cardboard is it the right thing to do from a customer & sustainability point of view?

3-    Avoid blind spot: how big is the gap between what we want to sell in term of products& solutions compared to what we really sell? are we walking the talk? what is the alteration between the brand promise and the reality? Not managing customer expectation may have big impact in social media

4-    Manage Competitor intelligence: this sounds good sense to know what the packaging industry is selling and understand their proposition. USP is something well known, so, what is truly different, what gives us something unique that our competitors do not have? People usually think about the equation: pricing = product + services: but it is more than that, we should take into consideration behaviours, sustainability, reliability , loyalty etc. what are our new tactics to make our customer experience a differentiator.

5-    Anticipate future taxes and legislation: with e commerce growth, no doubt that this business will be subjected to new taxes and to new regulations. The European commission is already working on it. What about packaging volume increase for communities, home waste? instead of being reactive to these news rules, how can we be more proactive? For example, shouldn’t we implement now returnable packaging?