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Less is more: Packaging Design & Inflation

By Andrea Pautenbaugh - December 10, 2008

in Object Culture | design.edu | Design Business

Educated consuming is one thing; sleuthing out clever design tactics is quite another. On the Today Show yesterday I witnessed what was probably a eureka moment for a packaging designer. Through tricking consumers into buying less, at the same price, new packaging has created a design solution to corporate cutback. The segment referenced a few leading brands:

Skippy reduced their peanut butter 2oz by changing the shape of the bottle, only noticeable if you look from the bottom...on the shelf, it's the same as usual. (By the way, still the same price!)

Apple Jacks reduced their contents from 11oz to 8.7oz. From the front, the old and the new look exactly the same, but from a profile comparison, not so. Again, still the same price.

Kleenex has reduced the size of their tissues from 8.4in x 8.4in to 8.2 x 8.4. Seems like a small change, but at their production rate, that's a lot of $not.

Tropicana reduced their orange juice containers by 7 ounces. They say, "new packaging," not "less product" of course.

Without old boxes in the stores or at home with which to make comparisons, these changes are hard to spot with our plain eyes. John Gorval, Marketing professor at Harvard Business School (who studied consumer sensitivity to price vs. package size) says, "If you ask most people what a bag of potato chips cost, they're pretty good at giving a number, ask them how much is contained in that package, my guess is that they have no idea."

Frito Lay says their "weight out" project earned them "double-digit profit growth." "Raising the prices would probably have created the opposite effect," says Gorval.

Perhaps however, things just got too big, and now we have to use crafty design tricks to fool ourselves back to healthy serving sizes? Leave your comments; this could get juicy.

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Matt

13 years ago

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Even with all the green hub-bub these days green packaging is an incredibly hard sell. The only way you can really get a company to see the light is to explain it in financial terms. If you save money by using less/better packaging, then why the hell not use it?

More green advocates should take note of this, instead of getting companies to take a loss in quality or cost to get subsidies from the government we should just make green packaging more profitable.
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aleafinwater

16 years ago

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I think the major point here is that packaging designers are not offering a choice to consumers, they are simply manipulating them in a way which is detrimental to the consumer.

The Brazilian laws which 'Paulo Cholla' pointed out should be adopted and implemented on a much larger scale.
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Don

16 years ago

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My wife noticed the same thing with a recent purchase of Dial bar soap. The 'Dial' name is imbedded deeper than before (1/4" vs 1/16". Yes, I measured!) and the scoop on the back side is deeper. These changes reduced the product size by 2oz, but of course, did not reduce the price.
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Pierre Ponce

16 years ago

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The bottomline is, people eat too much for their sedentary lives. So learn to reduce your daily intake, eat more healthy, seasonal food: you wil be fine and it will cost you less. All the people who live the longest eat rather frugally.
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stuart

16 years ago

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What about looking at this from a eco/shipping perspective? With the new packaging the carbon footprint per volume of skippy peanut butter is increased. Plus the last bit at the bottom of the jar will be harder to get at!!!
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chris

16 years ago

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Remember when you used to buy a case of pop and it had 24 cans? Now their all 12 packs.. Walmart has been doing similar to this for years.. Wow that's a great price for a case of motor oil... Hmm why is there 18 bottles in a case instead of 24?
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dana

16 years ago

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It is possible that preserving the overall package dimensions allows the surely automated handling equipment at the packaging factory to remain unchanged, preventing a further increase in cost.

I'm not saying the parent companies aren't happy to disguise some profit, but it might not be a completely malicious strategy.
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laru

16 years ago

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maybe it's because i have a spouse who does package design, but i've noticed this starting about 2 years ago for the cereals. 13oz boxes went to 11oz, etc. the peanut butter bottles are a great example of this as well. mostly, though, these are restricted to items where people don't inherently associate a size with the product. for example, a gallon of milk, a 2 liter bottle, etc. if people start seeing those get smaller, they're going to say something...
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Jeremy Sewell

16 years ago

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Really, OK maybe it's a little sneaky but in most cases I'd rather have a little less product then to have to stop buying a product because it costs too much now, and come on people who are really concerned with how much their spending on food stuffs look at the ounces and people who don't need to don't I know I've been both, used to look, don't any more, what annoys me is the mis-matched units among the same type of product.
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sykmyn

16 years ago

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This sort of stuff has been happening in every field since Colgate had their legendary breakthrough of making the hole on the end bigger.

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Paulo Cholla

16 years ago

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back here in Brazil there are laws for this kind of situation. if a company wants to reduce the weight of a product, it MUST be stated on the package. otherwise, they can receive a fine and be prosecuted for tricking the consumer, in what we call "make-up product".

nice post! ;)
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deez

16 years ago

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In my boiler plate preliminary quote estimates for clients, I've changed the "3-5 concepts" to "2-5 concepts" - no one noticed it yet

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Dave Klesser

16 years ago

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Good post.

I think the most important idea is to educate people about the effects of packaging design.

Many products use the packaging tricks to actually decrease the volume of the packages, but still visually appearing the same size, if not larger in some cases. but it is fully up to consumers to be responsible for what they buy. I can't deny that it is a bad trick when a company decreases volume to make some more money, but people need to be accountable for what they purchase.
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