Monday, February 14, 2011

Packaging Quality & Size

The rising inflation is making FMCG marketers rework their packaging strategy. The sachet revolution has become a folklore in the marketing world, on how it pushed consumption into newer and newer markets. But the current need to revisit their packaging decision is not driven by the need to increase penetration, but from the need to control price increase. Though some of the companies are still working on reducing the weight & keeping the price constant, I am not sure about its efficacy, when the reduction is 5-10 gms , as in the case of biscuits & confectionery maybe the consumer will not notice but when the weight goes down from 500gms to 325gms it sure to be noticed ...

The second aspect is related to coming up with cheaper packing options, so that it helps them save money. This again seems to be a very risky strategy where in many categories the packing also protects the basic product itself , especially in the context of the mom-n-pop stores in Indian retail. They say that when Marico first introduced plastic containers for parachute they had to do a lot of convincing before the retailer agreed , because till that point plastic quality used to be so bad that rats could actually eat into the containers!!!

And overall the packing quality has never been comparable to the developed world , either in terms of quality or in terms of details on the packs. Are we moving in the right direction?
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1 comment:

  1. ManojMay 23, 2011 at 6:54:00 AM PDT

    Inflation is a tricky time especially for FMCG's. On the first part where they are trimming the sizes of the products, well that has always been a traditional process during such times. And this time Inflation being due to huge demand in India and cooling this demon would take some time( government needs to bring abt policy changes), i beleive that its better to increase the prices by a small percentage than trying to reduce the overall quality( like degarding the covers). Consumers who now are information handy (technology enabled) would definitely take that.

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