MODERN PACKAGING

Modern Packaging survey discloses most companies are fumbling in packaging research. Those who use it consistently have 10-year sales increases double the average

The title of this article is a three-bladed question, the answers to which should be of vital interest to packagers everywhere.

How much packaging research is being done today? How much does it cost? And how much does it contribute to increased sales?

To point the way, at least, toward answers to these questions, Modern Packaging has just completed a questionnaire survey of packaged products. The results are not comprehensive, but they are, perhaps, as significant in the unknowns as in the knowns. If the sample can be considered as representative of the entire packaging field, the following conclusions can be drawn:

•º How widely used? Eight out of 10 packaging companies employ packaging research to some extent. But 64% use it only on occasion and have no planned program of packaging research.

^ What does it cost? Among those companies which have a planned program and known costs, expenditures for packaging research now average about three-tenths of 1% of sales.

•º Does it pay? Sales increases of those companies which have used packaging research for at least 10 years have heen nearly double the average for most packaged goods. Sales of the research-minded packagers in the 10 years 1947-57 went up an average of 91.3%. The over-all gain in dollar volume of all non-durable goods in the same period was only 54.2% and some major package-using industries, such as foods and beverages (up 36%), were well below that.¹

And as evidence that those companies with a 10-year record of packaging research are well aware that it pays, the survey discloses this interesting

¹Source: U. S. Department of Commerce, Office of Business Economics.