FUTUPACK-CON PROJECT produced information about future food packages

Friday, 19 August 2011 06:57

Packaging and food industries’ interests are to find new products and packages to create added value for their businesses. Consumers’ interests are to get products and packages, which better fill their needs. FUTUPACK-CON project aimed to create ideas, develop, make and test new concepts for future food packages.

This was implemented by integrating the views of packaging technology, food industry, packaging design, and consumer research into the development process. Concurrent aims were to explore a process for consumer driven invention, development and testing of food packages and to produce understanding about consumers’ expectations for future food packages.

Aim for more ecological packaging, adaptation to the needs created by consumers’ diverging food practices, improving convenience of use, and broadening the communicative role of packaging were recognized as important challenges for food package development. Two prototype packages, “On-the-go” and “Biostart”, were produced according to these needs. The project produced ideas for development of future food packages as well as information about consumers‘ wishes and views for future food packages in general and related to ideas which were studied. The project was coordinated by VTT consumer research.

Course of the project

FUTUPACK-CON project consisted of several phases and proceeded iteratively narrowing down from broad views to more limited ones ending up in producing concrete prototype packages. Applied tools in this project were expert workshops, consumer studies, works of package design students, consultation of experts and coordination work to steer the process. The first expert workshop in FUTUPACK-CON project produced a wide variety of ideas for food package development. Various themes were recognized as important challenges for food package development and the following were selected as the starting point for the concept development: aim for more ecological packaging, adaptation to the needs created by consumers’ diverging food practices, improving convenience of use, and utilizing the possibilities created by novel packaging-, printing- and information technologies for broadening the communicative role of packaging. Based on these themes, we created descriptions of seven exemplary concept ideas, which were then subjected for consumer evaluation in focus-group discussions.

Consumers’ views as a basis for prototype packages

This study produced information about how consumers evaluate new kinds of packaging concepts, what kind of issues are perceived as advantages and what are the factors arousing suspicion. This information was applied in the following phase, when these ideas were further developed by students of packaging design and in expert workshops. Two concept lines, “On-the-go” and “Biostart” were then selected to be realized in the form of concrete prototype packages, which were finally studied with sensory methods for their tactile characteristics as well as in two (qualitative and quantitative) consumer studies for their acceptance. In consumer studies the prototypes were, among other things, compared with commercial products.

The results of the project

The prototype package On-the-go, resulting from this project, was aimed to meet the needs of eating and snacking on the move. It was made of recyclable board material and its’ convenience of use was improved with a grip included as part of the package to protect fingers and the food during eating. The idea of Biostart prototype package was to function not only as a package but also as a small bio-waste container, which can be taken to compost with the waste.

FUTUPACK-CON project produced ideas for development of future food packages as well as information about consumers‘ wishes and views for future food packages in general and related to ideas which were studied. The process of the entire project, methods and main results from each of the eight sub-phases of the project are described in the final report of the project. In conclusion, the results are discussed from the point of view of food package development and project process.

FUTUPACK-CON project was part of Futupack network (www.futupack.fi) and it was funded by Tekes (the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation). VTT consumer research coordinated the project and the other project partners were National consumer research centre, Psychology unit in University of Helsinki and VTT package research.

Download:
FUTUPACK-CON final report (in Finnish)

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