With the surge in online shopping, the focus has dramatically shifted towards the unboxing experience at home, spotlighting the dual role of secondary and tertiary packaging.
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In the vast ocean of marketing strategies, one unsung hero often floats under the radar: packaging. It’s not just a vessel for the product inside anymore but a crucial piece for building the brand and customer relationships. Traditionally, primary packaging holds the product, secondary packaging contributes to enhanced branding, and tertiary packaging, typically shipping boxes, facilitates physical delivery. In modern retail, secondary packaging, such as shopping bags, plays a primary role, evolving into a powerful branding and customer engagement conduit. And as our shopping habits have shifted more and more online, the shipping box is taking centre stage.
With the Indian online retail industry sitting pretty at about $60 billion last year, predictions are that by 2027, nearly 427 million Indians will be shopping online. That’s a whole new universe of buying, selling, and boxing stuff up. The online retail industry has already started recognising the box’s pivotal role in the shopping experience, where the act of shopping is experienced more in the anticipation and joy of unboxing than just putting items in the cart. Industry giants have even symbolically embraced this shift, with Amazon updating its app icon from a cart to a box.
Branding and the Box
With the surge in online shopping, the focus has dramatically shifted towards the unboxing experience at home, spotlighting the dual role of secondary and tertiary packaging. In this digital shopping landscape, the shipping box acts as the brand’s initial physical touchpoint with the customer. This evolution transforms the shipping box into a branding billboard for the retailer, making a lasting first impression.
The e-commerce giant Amazon has mastered the art of packaging, making its simple, smiley-faced boxes into icons of consumer culture. Unlike digital ads that disappear fast, the box stays in your home, constantly reinforcing the brand’s presence. It’s common to reuse boxes for storage or moving, each time subtly reminding you of the brand’s ubiquity. To keep improving its packaging, Amazon also actively seeks customer feedback.
From unique, colourful box designs to telling stories, delivery-focused brands have always known the importance of boxes for brand building. Domino’s, the original delivery expert brand, has been investing strategically in the box design for brand communications. For example, the trimmed-cornered hexagonal pizza boxes have always lent memorability to the brand. Further, Domino’s boxes promote the brand in several ways, such as ‘two pizza deals’ with one red box and one blue box, which bring the logo to life when physically joined together.