Benjamin Punchard: It seems the retail world has gone value mad

It seems the retail world has gone value mad.  Not the interesting ‘added’ kind of value but the ‘let’s make things as cheap as possible’ kind.  Supermarkets are falling over themselves to offer promotions.  We’ve got price matching, price crunching, price drops, price guarantees.  Who knows what they’re going to do to price next.

But we’ve come out of a recession with consumers facing further economic uncertainty (just heard the PM discussing Euro-contagion, that doesn’t sound good).  So it seems churlish to make fun of a marketing strategy that’s clearly going to help consumers make their money go further.

So cheap is here to stay, but what does it mean for packaging?  An obvious and simple answer is that packaging quality will fall as margins face ever tightening squeezes.  If consumers are shopping on price alone then what matter if the packaging is not as robust as before?  Or doesn’t have such good print quality?

But does this have to be the only answer?  Surely we can offer more intelligent solutions than just the same thing cheaper?  Refill pouches offer one route.  We’re starting to see these here in the UK but still massively lag behind the Asian market where refill pouches are utilised across virtually all home and personal care and are pretty common in food too.

What about pack sizes?  Providing greater range so those consumers who might not need as much product can simply buy less.  Or increasing usage effectiveness – like the method pump that ensures consumers use the right amount of detergent and get the full advertised number of washes out of the pack.

The retailers are right.  Consumers do compare prices and want the lowest.  But that way could end up with poor quality product that’s not protected by the packaging – and what’s the value in that?  Today’s economic climate is a challenge for packaging, but one I think it can rise to.

Benjamin Punchard is head of packaging research at Euromonitor International