Launching a Product - How much does packaging impact the success of a product?

Hello, my name is Ian Peterman. I am CEO and founder of Peterman Design Firm, and on today's episode I'm going to talk about how much does packaging affect the success of a product. This is something I get— I've been asked by clients and people looking to launch a new product And even product developers and product designers who are asking that question of people in marketing and things like that. It's really, how much does the packaging impact the success of a product? And I'll get into all of that in a little bit. It's a really broad area that is really important. Packaging is part of a product, but not all products. And so this question is an ongoing question that really gets asked every single time a new product is launched. How much is the packaging worth, or how much is it adding in terms of value to the product? First, I want to talk about what is the purpose of packaging. We have this packaging, we put a product in it, and it goes out and goes to a customer. But what is the purpose of packaging? And there's a couple of purposes for it. One is providing marketing information. It's for selling it. It's for having shelf space, attracting your eye while on a shelf, being visually appealing. It's also a structural component that, depending on the product, is how that product actually gets to the customer in one piece. So a lot of things are made out of glass or are more fragile, things like our phones. They get the packaging because it's protective packaging. It makes it so the product will actually be able to ship from wherever it's being made and the final assembly all the way to you, the customer. And so that structural protective requirement there, that can be one of the purposes of packaging. Now, the last part is experience. So you can notice this on really, really fancy packaging and packaging that's really designed with a purpose where your customer experience, the experience of actually receiving it, to the point where we have entire YouTube channels about unboxing. That's how much thought process gets put into it. And one of the purposes that packaging has is in creating that customer experience. Now, not all products need it. Not all products want to use it. Not all products should have it. It can be a drawback depending on what you're doing. I mean, I don't think anybody is really trying to create a luxurious experience of opening a box of screws. You want to be able to open the box of screws and use them. So it has its place. And so its customer experience is going to be different. And you want to be aware of it, though it's not always the primary focus of packaging. Now, who sees packaging? So in the day and age that we live in, where digital and online shopping, and especially with pandemic, where most shopping has gone online even further, so who sees packaging? Now, A lot of focus is put on, you know, the visual of it is good. It's for marketing. It's going to be on our store shelf. But with online sales always increasing and with pandemic pushing that number even higher, you know, some people are starting to ask that question, well, who actually is going to see the packaging? What— who's the packaging for? And there's a few points. While we may not always be designing it for shelves anymore. You know, there's definitely still store shelves, and, you know, even Amazon has physical stores that you can go to. So the store shelf hasn't gone away completely. It's still definitely here. So that is one piece, but it's also your customer. And like I mentioned, the last portion is, you know, the customer experience. Your customer is going to see the packaging. And it really has use in conveying additional information. You probably don't want to print everything that you print on the back of a packaging on your actual product. And you don't want to put your instructions inside the product. So there are a lot of purposes. And who sees it? The person who sees it is really the customer. And they're going to be interacting with it, and that's who you want to think about. So this is going to definitely impact your customer, what kind of packaging and what that looks like. Now, packaging absolutely impacts sales. So whether you're selling the product online and the The experience is really once they order it. Your sale process, your sales process is going to be impacted because if they look online and it looks really great, but they get it and the packaging is actually not that great in person, then they're gonna have a disconnect in terms of what was expected or what it looked like and then what they were actually experiencing. And of course, any kind of sales in person, so conventions and events and in stores and anything that's gonna have that in person, especially if you have someone that's in person selling product, packaging can definitely impact the sales process. And you want to make sure that your sales process and the customer experience is as good as possible. And so doing packaging right will help your sales, it'll help the experience on the back end, and it'll help ensure that people, you know, keep their product and are able to use it properly because you are able to give them good instructions on the packaging on how to use a product. So sales and packaging, they're very tied together, and packaging absolutely will impact the success of your product in sales. The huge part that your product packaging will impact is that customer experience. I know I've said it a couple times, but I have to say it again. This is all about customer experience. Your customer experience is 100% impacted by the packaging. That's the first thing that they will ever physically touch of your product. They're not going to grab your product first. They're going to grab the packaging that your product is in, and then they're going to hold it, and then they're going to open it if they purchased it. Hopefully not doing that in the middle of the store. So you want to look at how is that customer experience. You know, we talked about sales a little bit, so you know, your sales process and what is your brand experience that customers have. And you want to make sure that your packaging has as good of an experience for your customer or better than any other part of your business. And it's because you are curating an experience, and their first experience is— you know, you can't have a first impression again. So if their first physical impression of your product is bad because packaging is really terrible, yeah, they might still buy it, But they're gonna immediately think of you as cheap, right? If you're selling a $1,000 product in a cellophane bag, it's not gonna really have the right impact you're looking for, most likely. So you wanna be aware of the packaging impact on the customer experience, and that is where the success of your product is greatly impacted by packaging. Because you want to make sure that that experience matches everything else. If you have a really, you know, low-cost product that you're not trying to create a really great experience packaging your product is something that really people just want to open and grab it and go, you know, food product, you don't want to open 5 boxes that are all nested together in a really nice way, you know, opening a phone box. and trying to get to the power cord at the bottom. If that was food, that would be very frustrating to have to dig through multiple layers of things just to get to your food. So there's definitely places where that is, but awareness of what that experience should be and what you want it to be will help define the packaging. And doing that packaging well will ensure that your customer experience is going to be one that really connects with your customers. So as you can see, packaging absolutely does impact success of your product. It's primarily focused around, you know, sales and customer experience and even marketing. Even in today's world, we still love to have photographs of nicely packaged products on our digital platforms in order to sell. We still like seeing those. We like seeing pictures of what's on the box, even though that packaging is something that's primarily designed for shelves, but it has the purpose of protecting the product as well. And so obviously not protecting the product will impact your success or not of a product because broken products arriving will never make anyone happy. So hopefully this gives you some ideas on what the impact is and why it is important to be aware of packaging and to do packaging well. Hey, thanks for watching. We really appreciate our viewers, and if you haven't subscribed yet, please do subscribe to our channel so you can get more great videos like this in your feed and like the video. If you want to learn more about the Peterman Design Firm, please check us out on our website, petermanfirm.com. You'll find link and information in the description. And of course, we're on all social media as well, so check us out there. All right, thank you. Thank you.