In these competitive times, businesses realize the foremost importance of the enhanced consumer experience. Emphasizing on self-expression, adopting economic and greener practices while utilizing technology in innovative ways, companies are adamant at providing products in unique customized packaging. Let’s see what essential components will be a part of the future of the custom box packaging.
Visually Enticing:
Each product packaging, with its distinctive features, sends a message to the audience and connects with them at an emotional level. Instead of using plain cardboards for boring packaging, the use of foils, inks, and glossy coatings with geometric and bold patterns will become popular. This evocative packaging will not only continue to influence buyer behaviour when picking products off of a shelf in a retail store but will also encourage its use in the gift-giving practices, eliminating the need for a wrapping paper altogether.
Hidden Messages:
Engaging consumers mentally, emotionally, and sensually with personalized messages scribbled across different sleeves and flaps of the custom boxes, wows your customers with a unique unboxing activity. When you directly speak to your consumers this way and the end goal is a pleasant experience, you have yourself cemented brand loyalty. As small businesses are on the rise, they will be increasingly utilizing this tactic by printing custom messages or dropping personalized cards in the packages to engage their target audience at a personal level.
Interactive Packaging:
With a trend towards engaging packaging, the otherwise mundane boxes are being turned into a fun-filled experience. Taking the example of Coca-Cola, we can see how it capitalized on this and connected with consumers by adding names on the bottles. With business on a boom in this era, such interactive experiences will change the game for them.
Water-Soluble Pods:
Offering eco-friendliness and ease of use, new innovative packaging is expected to hit the market soon. Packed in PVA films, these water-soluble pods are used to pack detergents and cosmetics for spa services. Similarly, utilizing milk proteins or fungus in packaging is also making strides. According to Future Market Insights, this market will see a compound annual growth rate of 16.4% over the next decade.
Sustainable:
Creative sustainability practices are being adopted more and more by companies across the globe. Looking at the preferences of the Generation-Z adopting eco-conscious practices, we also see rising trends in upcycling. Many brands, without compromising on the designs, will be utilizing modularity when ordering their custom boxes wholesale. Like, The Body Shop brand is boldly and widely embracing its creative reuse of the packaging as a cute trinket dish or for potting a plant.
Heating Packs:
Water-activated thermal packs are on a stellar rise. In the food industry, this self-heating food packaging design will take convenience to a whole new level. Pouring cold water into the pack containing the food, and voila! Only in ten to fifteen minutes, you will have self-heated food. This will be the perfect to-go meal in the near future.
Self-Chiller Packaging:
Based on the simple mechanism of releasing liquefied CO2 to cool off the liquid packed inside, The Joseph Company’s self-chiller cans set an example for innovative packaging trends. Such self-chilling packaging can have a significant impact on the food, especially the beverage industry, and we will most likely see a surge in the utilization of this innovative application in the packaging industry.
Money-Saver:
The regular boxes used for packaging and delivering products are usually bulky, with a major portion of the space wasted because of the existing common designs. This uneconomical practice not only creates more waste, especially because of the packing filler material but also costs businesses and eventually, consumers money in the long run. Futuristic custom boxes will be according to the product requirements and save money on manufacturing as well as transportation costs, providing ease.
Reliable Packaging:
With an exponential increase in the tech industry, Amazon is considering the use of drones to drop off packed products at the doorstep. Even if drones are far in the future, the drop off deliveries requires the packaging of the product to be reliable enough, when left unattended, that it withstands weather changes or accidental external stimuli. Considering these factors, a trend in inflatable-packaging is on the rise.
Biomimetic Packaging:
Many companies are finding inspiration for their packaging from nature. Mimicking organic items, sustainable shapes and structures, and various objects in the world, thus vastly delighting the customers. The concepts of “live-packaging” and utilizing graphene in lightweight packaging are also emerging fast.
Smart Packaging:
Embedding Augmented Reality and Nanotechnology in the packaging is a hot new trend that is still undergoing research. Companies are striving to keep up with new technology trends and constantly implementing innovative ideas when ordering their custom boxes wholesale. Currently, accessible trends are the QR codes printed on the boxes. These provide customers, in case of perishable items, detailed nutritional info, and in case of other merchandise, it gives the customer a thorough insight into the details of the product and the company.
3D Printing:
To create complex shapes on demand and to take the conventional die-cuts to the next level, bound only by imagination, 3D printing promises an incredible future for the packaging industry. A superior alternative to current methods, additive manufacturing will produce unique and smarter product packaging.
The future is here now! Companies that realize this are working out their plans to get the required size and make the packaging compact, while also minimizing waste and costs but not compromising on the reliability. We can now see how enhancing the customer experience and taking into account the economic and environmental factors while assimilating new technologies are going to be the underlying components of the future of the custom box packaging.
