Consumers today have more choices available to them than ever before. As such, competition at the retail shelf level is fierce, to say the least. That is why some of today's leading manufacturers, such as Procter & Gamble, have built a new "demand-driven" imperative around the "moment of truth" concept — the crucial point in time when a consumer makes a purchasing decision.

Innovation in packaging plays an all-too-critical role in this decisive moment, something that manufacturers are extremely privy to, according to recent news and research.

A recent white paper entitled "Packaging Design, Trends and Technologies" highlights many new bells and whistles and emphasizes the fine point that, "to be successful in the market today, you must not only achieve this sort of reaction with your package design, but the package must also function well and provide a positive, memorable experience for the consumer," as Dennis Calamusa, the author of the report, said.

To cut costs associated with manufacturing, and in order to meet the needs of a fast-paced consumer, increasingly more manufacturers are turning to flexible packaging. Visual and functional features are being integrated into pouch packaging designs to add consumer convenience and build new brand identity. For instance:

These options include the ability to use premade pouches, which can be filled and sealed; or the ability to install machinery, which can produce the flexible package online from rollstock. Form, fill, and seal is typically the lower-cost approach; however, the capital investment and operator skill required for this approach is greater.

Designers and marketers are incorporating spouts as part of the design and functionality elements of their packaging to appeal to a broad cross-section of consumers. Nowhere is this type of packaging adoption more prevalent than in the beer and wine category.

Guinness, for example, has unveiled Satzenbrau, a premium Pilsner lager beer, the packaging for which is "stylish and very creative" and "a new addition and innovation to beer branding" that will be difficult to replicate, according to The Daily Sun. Wine makers are also "creating a demand in previously untapped markets," according to JoAnn Hines, Packaging University's "Packaging Diva."

"They are creating brands with a synergistic approach, new bottles, new packaging materials, new shapes, new labels, new dispensing features, new closures, and consequently new customers," according to the report. And Foster's Lager recently won a best-in-class award for its "waterfall" packaging for cases of cans or bottles sold in supermarkets. The packaging was partly responsible for an increase in market share to 29 percent from 23.7 percent. Not bad, mate.

Packaging of the future will also begin to incorporate track and trace capabilities, according to Labels & Labeling. This type of smart packaging "can sense the environment and react to changes, offer track-and-trace capability in the supply chain, detect the presence of pathogens in packaged material and convey information to the user through a variety of means," Labels & Labeling said.

A recent study published by NanoMarkets explores the opportunities in smart packaging and forecasts that, by 2011, the smart packaging market will be worth $4.7 billion. For brand manufacturers, smart packaging opens the prospect of creating or reinforcing brand identities through the use of these high-tech features.

Advanced Packaging also has the beat on the concept known as "chip-package co-optimization," a methodology that aims to appease the packaging engineer's long-time lament dealing with the challenges of an over-designed or too-large silicon chip. In a nutshell:

Chip-level I/O planning is generally done in isolation of the package or the rest of the system. This can lead to overly complex and even un-routable package designs that need multiple iterations to resolve. An alternate methodology uses package-aware chip design to enable chip designers to consider package routability, power delivery, and I/O behavior during the initial I/O planning process.

High-accuracy packaging procedures will also gain more attention as demands for creative packaging concepts continue to put a strain on the boundaries of innovation. Take this excerpt from Advanced Packaging, for instance:

One challenge to implementing an effective mass-imaging process lies in delivering the wafer or singulated substrate into the mass-imaging machine to establish and maintain correct alignment throughout deposition of the flux, solder balls, or other material. Singulated substrates can then be processed directly from the process carrier in a single cycle. This is a desirable alternative to the time-consuming unloading and reloading of each substrate individually, which increases the potential for substrate damage.

Whatever your take on packing innovation is, one thing is certain: fickle consumers and new product introductions will continue to force manufacturers to innovate to meet and ultimately exceed expectations.

Resources

Packaging Design, Trends, And Technologies
by Dennis Calamusa
Packaging Network, Nov. 14, 2006

Guinness unveils new Satzenbrau
Sun News Publishing, Nov. 29, 2006

How Packaging Can Transform An Industry
by JoAnn Hines
Nov. 27, 2006

Smart packaging comes of age
by Lawrence Gasman
Labels and Labeling, July 6, 2006

Chip-package Co-optimization
by Joel McGrath
Advanced Packaging, September 2006

Substrate Handling for High-accuracy Packaging Processes
by Steve Watkin
Advanced Packaging, September 2006