Can consumption increase?
Alcoa's packaging division produces the material to make 100 billion aluminum cans each year. By the late 1990s, volume had declined because new plastic bottles were taking market share in even "safe" channels such as vending. Field research explored the role of beverage packaging in shopping, storage, preparation, and consumption. Consumers were found to associate aluminum cans with good, honest, blue-collar work, "gulp-and-go" use, and multi-pack purchases. The opportunity was to better exploit these inherent attributes. "Embrace the Can" emerged as Alcoa's new strategic imperative. We found that getting quantities of cans into the fridge was a post-purchase barrier to consumption. How consumers think about the "real estate" of their refrigerators was especially important: the back is considered a "dead zone" and items that are long and deep (like an egg carton) are considered to be the most space efficient. Ideation sessions with Alcoa and secondary packaging company Graphic Packaging led to the highly successful "Fridge Pack" dispensing multi-pack. Fridge Pack has gone on to become the first secondary package to be adopted around the world. |
