First impressions matter a lot, and your product’s packaging is usually your customer’s first contact with your product. This is part of what makes product packaging such an important factor that businesses should never disregard.
The significance of product packaging is diverse, and it may go a long way toward ensuring a favorable first impression and long-term brand loyalty.
However, in its most basic form, packaging helps to protect the contents within the package from damage. Packaging must protect the product throughout transit between the production site and the store, as well as protect the product while it is on the shelf. This is why product packaging should be made durable and dependable.
Through the years, Amazon has played a big role in the evolution of product packaging trends and has become widely recognized as the industry’s pacesetter.
Packaging Trends in the Age of Amazon
In 1994, Jeff Bezos launched Amazon in his garage. In its first phase of operations, Amazon had weekly sales of over $20000 and has now grown to $100 billion in revenue, accounting for over 49% of all online transactions and employing over 15500 full-time employees. Owing to several of these factors, the company has significantly influenced the packaging industry.
Here, we will look at some of the major advances that Amazon has helped to bring about as well as the effect they have had on the packaging industry.
Direct Shipping
During the shipping process, Amazon often makes use of third-party shippers and warehouses. This involves having things shipped directly from third-party stores to buyers, usually one at a time. Suppliers are compelled to provide high-quality packaging or risk losing business to Amazon by shipping directly to the customer rather than to Amazon.
This direct-to-consumer business model will continue while Amazon works to extend its shipping options in a variety of ways, including the use of drones and automated trucks in the future. Packaging must be made to accommodate these upcoming changes, and Amazon even offers workshops for its suppliers to help them stay up with the new terrain.
Shipping Rates and On-Time Delivery
Amazon has been able to maintain its online service by using on-time delivery for its consumers and making sure their sellers deliver on time. Packaging must be completed on time so that Amazon can correctly notify consumers when their items will be delivered and provide them with a trustworthy time window when making purchases. As a result of Amazon’s success in this sector, consumers are now expecting this fast delivery service, driving competitors to follow suit.
Closely related to this is the company’s offer for orders above $25. This long-standing approach has prompted competitors like Walmart and Barnes & Noble to make comparable offers. Furthermore, Prime customers do not have to pay delivery charges because of their membership fees, which is another Amazon ingenuity.
Push for Eco-Friendliness and Sustainability
Not only are modern consumers keen on ecologically friendly packaging, but Amazon is also establishing targets with its suppliers to uphold sustainability criteria, notably recyclable materials and the capacity of the packaging to be repurposed.
Amazon created “Frustration-Free Packaging” (FFP) initiatives with its partners in 2008, which defined industry best practices and advice for brand packaging. These specifications improved package options to meet product sizes and weights better. In collaboration with its suppliers, eliminated fillers in packaging and minimized packaging waste by almost 1,000,000 tons.
Change in Packaging Materials
As previously stated, Amazon has been able to cut the weight of the packaging they utilize by more than 36% since 2015. Amazon has had a significant influence on the products used by working with its suppliers to minimize fillers, make the packaging handy, and ensure it is recyclable.
In reality, while plastic packaging can be hard to recycle sometimes, Amazon continues to work with consumers to advise them on how and where to recycle this type of packaging. Considering that Amazon is progressively using plastic mailers and plastic bags to conserve space in trucks and minimize shipping costs, it is critical that this training continues.
Are You On Amazon?
In conclusion, Amazon has altered packaging in many ways, namely how it is created, how waste is avoided, how businesses may save resources, and how to make packaging recyclable
and sustainable. Amazon’s competition will be turning to the online company as the market leader and the standard that they set for e-commerce shipments
