Over-packaged alcohol products not a major consumer concern
In The Future of Sustainable Alcoholic Beverage Packaging it finds that 20 per cent of consumers globally would consider buying an alternative if they perceive an alcoholic product to be over-packaged.
At 43 per cent, the Chinese exhibit the highest propensity for over-packaging to affect thier alcohol choice. In contrast, only nine per cent of Japanese consumers would let packaging affect their choice of alcohol product.
For Datamonitor, the overall picture continues to underline consumers being less likely to be influenced by sustainability issues as far as alcohol purchases are concerned, although at over a fifth, the share of consumers is large enough to warrant serious industry attention.
Seven per cent of respondents globally feel that the amount of packaging very highly influences their present choice of product in the alcohol category while 15 per cent reckon that it exerts a high amount of infulence, 33 per cent a medium amount of influence, 20 per cent a low amount and 24 per cent a very low amount of influence.
Datamonitor also finds that although alcohol lacks a popular perception for over-packaging, more consumers will act by changing their purchase behavior if confronted with a product that seems over-packaged to them. However, this still only amounts to two-in-ten consumers, showing that it’s not a mainstream consideration for alcohol consumers in product choice.
There is little variation in views between age groups and genders with respect to whether packaging affects product choice – demographics have a limited impact on changing opinions over alcohol purchases based on over-packaging. By age, as is the case for grocery products overall, Young Adults and Mid-Lifers show a slightly elevated propensity for considering their choices. This is further category-specific evidence of those age groups’ heightened awareness of and sensitivity to the issue of sustainability and willingness to respond to it with alterations to their consumption behavior.
Datamonitor points out that consumers are still generally ill-equipped to make highly-informed judgments about the environmental merits and drawbacks of different forms of packaging. Furthermore, many consumers have been conditioned to believe that ‘better-for-the-environment’ equates to ‘worse-for-the-wallet’.
