Packaging Evaluation of Consumer Electronics Products from Economic, Logistical, and Environmental Perspectives

Abstract

With the growing applications of information technologies, consumer electronics products are being widely used in our daily life and at our workplaces. However, most consumer electronics packaging is one-time consumption and produces tremendous environmental impacts. Different package designs affect not only logistics efficiency, but also environmental performance. Here, various package designs for a consumer electronics product are studied and a packaging evaluation method is proposed. The method evaluates package designs mainly based on package characteristics information to avoid the inclusion of too much subjective human judgment. The criteria of the evaluation consider five aspects: marketing, logistics, cost, user convenience, and environment, including protection and containment, stackability, volume, and weight efficiency, product information, packaging cost, packaging waste, etc. The case of computer mice is used to illustrate the proposed method. The preliminary results show that different package designs of a consumer electronics product have a significant impact on logistical, marketing, economic, and environmental performance. Based on existing data of package designs, the proposed method can provide valuable information for improvements in package design, supply chain efficiency, and environmental impact.