Meeting the Demands and Preferences of the Future Consumer: Future-Proofing Packaging

Consumer trend forecaster WGSN released a Future Consumer 2024 white paper examining “key consumer sentiments and profiles, and the action points brands need to take to win minds and market share.” The four principal consumer personas for 2024 introduced in the white paper include:

• Regulators

According to the white paper, this persona relies on consistency as a survival mechanism, wants a healthy work-life balance and desires frictionless commerce to maintain control.

• Connectors

“Determined to rewrite the rules of entrepreneurship and fractional living,” Connectors are taking a stance against hustle culture and are quitting their jobs as they redefine the meaning of success.

• Memory Makers

Memory Makers have a focus on decluttering lives and redefining family values. This persona “will transform a quest for perfection into a quest for being present by decluttering their social and work lives and investing in time abundance.”

• New Sensorialists

This persona loves everything digital. The “quintessential hybrid consumer, New Sensorialists will pay with crypto while dining in-person.”

Brands will need to take action to keep pace with these changing consumer preferences and demands. These actions should include rethinking packaging to appeal to consumers now and in the future.

To make products more engaging to Regulators, brands should ensure packaging is frictionless. Frictionless packaging contains must have features of sustainability and accessibility while also providing a better consumer experience overall. These attributes take the friction out of the buying decision – a value proposition that resonates with Regulators.

To engage with Connectors, “sustainability facts labeling” is a must-have, according to an analysis of these personas appearing in Packaging Strategies. When it comes to this persona, the use of recycled and recyclable materials in packaging can serve as a key differentiator and an important consideration for this group when choosing one brand over another.

The Packaging Strategies article noted that to engage Memory Makers brands should “design products with a broader and more inclusive feel to meet diverse needs and perspectives.” A value-add for this persona would be a brand that uses innovative, accessible packaging to create an inclusive product experience that is consistent for everyone.

Always ready to embrace new technologies, New Sensorialists appreciate innovations that create immersive experiences. Connected packaging, which blends the physical with the digital to engage, educate and entertain consumers, is a packaging strategy brands can use to successfully attract this persona.

Consumer demands and preferences are shifting. To keep pace, brands need actionable packaging strategies that align with the key sentiments and attributes shaping consumer behavior. More simply, brands need the EEASY Lid. CCT’s EEASY Lid offers essential packaging design elements that have mass appeal across consumer personas. Sustainable (100% recyclable), accessible (easy to use for people of all ages and abilities), innovative (software designed) and engaging (QR codes can be featured on jars with the EEASY Lid to take customers to a video demonstrating how to use it), the EEASY Lid is the must have packaging solution for engaging the consumers of today and tomorrow.

Future-proof your packaging with the EEASY Lid. Contact us today to learn more.