Internet of Packaging and the Bridge Between Digital Marketing and Physical Retailing

Abstract

This paper aims to discuss, define, and analyze a set of perspectives and potentials of smart interactive packaging applied to CPGs to fill up the space between marketing and physical retailing in terms of knowledge distribution. Smart interactive packaging goes beyond the traditional one-way informational flow and triggers dialogue between the package and consumer at several user touch points. The paper takes into consideration two engaged environments: the retail environment and the use environment, where packaging interacts with the consumer. Due to enabling technologies, smart interactive packaging becomes a channel for story-telling and knowledge distribution among the brand, retailer, and consumer. Authors propose that IoP-enabled packaging converts the story told by the digital marketing into a physical artifact presented on the physical retail shelf, as well as contributes to product improvement and innovation due to collected, assessed and distributed knowledge related to consumer data.