Domestic Appliances and Personal Care

Communication, product protection and presentation are three key aspects in the world of packaging nowadays. Due to a retail landscape consisting of large stores, displaying packed products on the shelves in self-service environments, these aspects become increasingly important, not only for Fast Moving Consumer Goods, but for consumer durables as well. In the communication aspect, the package delivers a promise to the customer contained in the package, but the package itself is part of this promise, creating expectation to be fulfilled when reaching for the product, the importance opportunity of this brief moment is shown throughout this paper. However, selling expensive consumer durables in self-service retail environments also brings with it the need for tamperproof packaging. The objective of tamperproof packaging is to prevent opening of the packaging by shoppers while in the store, in order to prevent theft or damage. However, tamperproof packaging makes it also difficult for the legitimate buyer to get to his new purchase. This conflicts with the positive message the packaging tries to communicate. The purpose of this paper is to present a description of the process aimed to reach a real solution in this design dilemma, based on literature research, consumer research (Unpacking experiments), identifying general concerns and needs of consumers. These serve as a base for the development of a proposal that leads to a proven, better user-experience in packaging openability and product perception, while maintaining tamperproofness in the store. Throughout this paper the iconic 3-Headed electrical shavers of Royal Philips Electronics, which is nowadays packed in tamperproof blisters, will serve for the analysis and development process