The psychological economy of packaging

The phenomenon of excessive packaging of goods is not uncommon. Liang Ping, executive vice chairman of the Taiyuan Packaging and Printing Association, suggested that in addition to strengthening the guidance of manufacturers and merchants, the country can introduce industry norms, regulate the packaging materials, the value ratio of packaging and commodities, and control excessive packaging.

In fact, there is no need to, the so-called excessive packaging is a by-product of decorative packaging, decorative packaging is the normal stage of market economy development.

In the United States, for example, in the first half of the 20th century, after the US product's standardization and high quality had reached a stable stage, merchants noticed that some products could not be sold without faster, more attractive, and more vivid packaging. Some people put forward a brand-new idea for this purpose. They should sell the package by selling goods. A package, no matter how economically applicable, no matter how well it plays a role in the protection and storage of products, as long as it does not function as a sales promotion, it is a failure. Therefore, the important, practical and basic function of packaging is to induce customers to buy goods. The packaging revolution, like other revolutions experienced by the Americans, has been swift and violent, and has been completed in only a third of a century. By the 1950s, "packaging" had become a new profession in the United States. Large companies had their own packaging experts, and small businesses consulted packaging engineers. By the 1960s, the US packaging industry had become an important industry with an annual output value of more than US$20 billion. Packaging is not only a new means of making a good price for the goods; packaging creates new uses, opens up new markets, and thus changes the goods themselves.

The rise of the packaging industry directly promoted the development of large supermarkets. When customers are in the vast sea of ​​supermarket products, no one leads the way, there is no clear target for purchase, and the exquisitely attractive packaging stimulates the customer's "improvisational purchase" desire. Instead of buying products, customers are buying packages. DuPont once conducted a series of investigations. They found that housewives’ purchases of more than half of their goods in supermarkets were “unplanned.” Housewives made an average of 14 purchases of goods within 27 minutes.

Nowadays, with the rapid development of China's market economy, the quality of many brands of goods is only slightly different, and even there is no difference. At this time, it is psychological differences that determine what kinds of goods people buy. The packaging is the use of psychological differences to show the characteristics of the products themselves.

Decorative packaging is an inevitable product of the era of psychological economy. Take wine and moon cakes, how to stimulate purchases and fight psychological warfare. Although some excessive packaging is suspected of being fraudulent and profiteering, it should be believed that relying on fraud and profits will not deceive consumers, and any “abnormal consumption” will not become mainstream consumption. As for the “unhealthy style that encourages gifts,” it is even more important to make gifts.

Packaging has penetrated into every corner of life, changing people’s perceptions of goods and changing their attitudes towards life. On Mid-Autumn Festival night, when a family is wrapping around a beautifully packed moon cake, when one person cuts a small piece and savors it, you should realize that the era of hemp paper and paper rope for moon cake is gone forever.