Business

The popularity of online communities to discuss packaging and products will increase in the future, delegates were told at the FaraPack Futures briefings at York Racecourse yesterday (11 November).

Laurence Hogg from FaraPack Knowledge told delegates at the two-day conference that technology is converging and consumers are increasingly spending time online.

He said that the human race is inherently lazy and so we will all be using virtual assistants to do our shopping for us in the future.

The result of which is that consumers are constantly connected and able to form communities that pass on information about bad packs and products.

The two-day event kicked-off with a talk through the changing retail space by Richard Cuthbertson from the Institute of Retail Futures at the Said Business School in Oxford.

Cuthbertson highlighted the challenges faced by the rise in internet shopping for packagers in consideration of whether a pack is going to be transported in bulk or individually wrapped.

He told delegates that the main challenges that are facing packagers are cost and the diverse customer base and told delegates they must think about the whole supply when creating a pack.

Subsequent speakers included David Jago from Mintel, who encouraged packagers to seek inspiration from packs from around the world and from different sectors to their own.

Meanwhile, Nick Leon from Naked Eye Research and Vijay Sodiwala from Caucus discussed the opportunity for packagers to learn from ethnographic research facilitated by online portals.

The day ended with a discussion of corporate responsibility in anticipation of further presentations today on declining resources, changing values and nanotechnology.