What is Shelf-Ready Packaging and How It is Shifting the Market of Consumer Packaged Goods?

26-July-2023

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Packaging, color, design, and even texture can affect consumer perception and purchasing behavior. [1]

Traditional packaging has been viewed as an approach and means exclusively to provide protection to products during transit, warehousing, and storage. In the age where consumer markets are shifting at such a fast pace that even a slight fault in packaging appeal can lose the attention of a client, traditional packaging has turned out to be such a thing that compromises a brand’s marketing performance and is an obstacle for branding.

Confronting the increasing competitiveness in the retail landscape where consumers can easily switch loyalties without costs to themselves, Consumer Packaged Goods (CPGs) now require packaging that can strike a balance between protection and marketing and allowing easy merchandising as well as shelf replenishment while significantly contributing to the product’s visibility and appeal on the shelf to conquer the market and take over the share.

Shelf-Ready Packaging (SRP) or Retail Ready Packaging (RRP) is the answer for them to stand out on store shelves and provide a seamless retail experience.

What is Shelf-Ready Packaging?

The shelf-ready packaging (SRP) does not refer to any certain form of packaging, rather, it is an approach to design the packaging in such a way that it can strike a balance between providing protection, tamper-proof, as well as allowing the products to be displayed at the retail shelf in a ready-to-sell manner, with the enhanced presentation to attract consumer attention and stimulate the decisions of purchase.

Ready-to-sell means that the product is already packaged in such a way that it can be directly placed on the retail store shelf for sale without requiring additional handling or repackaging. The product is already in a display or shelf-ready case, making it easier for retailers to stock their shelves, and improving in-store efficiency.

SRP or RRP has turned out to be a requirement of entry and an indispensable factor among retailers’ marketing strategies. [2]

What are the Fundamental Characteristics of SRP or RRP?

Approximately 70 percent of purchase decisions are made in-store. [3] The features by which SRPs and RRPs are designed to improve the shelf-visibility and contribute to the consumer’s decision to grab something to go.

The features and benefits of shelf-ready packaging are highlighted throughout its lifecycle [4] including:

Get identified along the supply chain and on the shelf
Open and being torn with
Replenishment
Purchasing
Disposed, recycled after use

The advantages of shelf-ready packaging are typically based on the convenience and visual appeal brought by the innovative designs, which are basically as follows

The easy identification of shelf-ready packaging brings an uplift to sales

About 4 out of 5 retailers believe that the use of retail-ready packaging can improve their sales and the uplift is estimated to be some 4%. [5]

RRP brings uplift to sales

SRP offers an ideal backdrop for showing off your brand’s identity. What’s even more advantageous is that, if carefully curated, it can effectively double as a complimentary promotional space. The secondary packaging with SRP should be seen as a continuation of your main packaging, consistently displaying the same distinguishable colors, fonts, and logos. This strategy allows the product to claim more visual territory on store shelves. In a more detailed explanation, this tactic involves making your outer packaging an echo of your primary packaging, strengthening your brand impression, and making your product more recognizable to customers.

Shelf-Ready Packaging is Easy to Open, Take Away and Replenish

For certain types of products, the SRP might be designed in such a way that it can also serve as an easy-to-carry home package for the consumer, while for the retail staff who consistently need to stock and restock products, SRP brings benefits as well to stock management. The easier the SRP is to open, the less time staff will spend unpacking and handling products, reducing labor costs and minimizing the risk of product damage. SRP systems are designed with features such as tears, perforations, or easy-to-open mechanisms that facilitate a quick and effortless unpacking process.

Now that in the CPG industry, each second stands for money and any delay in the replenishment will result in potential losses in revenue, the essentialness of SRP with regard to simplifying the processes can lead to faster stocking and shorter in-store handling times and thus to allow staff to focus on other customer service-related tasks, ensuring that consumers have the best possible experience while shopping.

Shelf-ready packaging is Easy to Reuse and Recycle

The fact the SRP can be replenished implies that the packaging can be used several times before it is disposed of. Moreover, SRP tends to use less packaging materials and adopt concise packaging designs for which the recycling processes will involve the handling of less waste.

The above advantages contribute to sustainability as well as keep pace with the growing consumer awareness about environmental friendliness so that the retailers can not only align with customer preferences but also help companies meet their corporate sustainability goals.

How Can Shelf Ready Packaging be Automated?

The challenges with Shelf-Ready Packaging´s automation are primarily about the automated forming of the basement by the method of pre-glued packaging or simply forming from the flat blank by a push-fit, then comes to the automation for collating the products and loading them within the base. For example, some of the most popular SRP packaging like cartons with perforation, 4-point glued carton trays, and stackable trays without lids are typically formed by the flat blank approach.

For OEMs of packaging automation, solutions for shelf-ready packaging is a far more complex task than the rest of the standard packaging like carton, film wrapping, flow wrapping, or case packing due to the fact that SRPs are not always designed in a fixed pattern, which means that the development of packaging equipment takes a longer time than standard solutions.

In many cases, manufacturers would start by manually assembly and fill the packaging and then switch to a semi-automatic approach when their sales are increasing and finally implement fully automatic solutions to keep abreast of the upsurging market demands.