The Customers’ Perception of Primary Packaging: a Comparison between Italian and Swedish Situations

The protection and containment of the product are considered the main roles of packaging. During the last decades, the function of packaging has evolved: it also covers a marketing role and it is something for insuring the product and ease of use to the customers. One question of immediate interest is how packaging should be designed to be associated with high quality from a customer perspective [1]. The authors base their research on Kano’s theory of attractive quality [2], with a study that reproduces the empirical investigation done by Löfgren and Witell in 2005 in Sweden [1], in order to increase the knowledge about the role of packaging in the perception of quality. Löfgren and Witell’s work investigated how 24 quality attributes of packages are perceived by customers, mailing a questionnaire to 1500 randomly chosen Swedes and asking them about their experience of packaging in everyday commodities [1]. The authors of this paper want to reproduce the same empirical investigation in Italy, submitting the questionnaire to Italian customers. This paper has a twofold purpose: the first is to compare two realities, Swedish and Italian customers’ perception, and to underline both the similarities and the differences between them. The second intent concerns the finding of potential developments to increase customer satisfaction and to improve some features linked with packaging, such as environmental aspects and ease of use. The results show that Italian customers are mainly interested in some packaging attributes, such as protection and ergonomics. Italian users also show interest in packaging made with recyclable materials. Comparing Italian and Swedish customers’ perception, there are some attributes considered important by both (e.g. protection, expiry date and product leakage), but also several differences regarding resealability, the use of recyclable materials and product quantity in packaging.