A Systematic Review of Consumer Perceptions of Smart Packaging Technologies for Food

Abstract

Smart packaging, an emerging technology in the food packaging industry incorporates both active and intelligent technologies. Consumer demand for natural products and increasingly extended and diverse supply chains required to feed the growing global population, mean that traditional packaging is becoming less capable of meeting the functional demands placed on it. To help ensure the commercial success of proposed smart packaging technologies a thorough understanding of consumers attitudes toward them is required. Understanding the cultural, social and cognitive factors that affect acceptance will help "fine tune" smart packaging development to best meet consumer preferences and needs and ensure that communication about the technologies effectively addresses consumer concerns and educates them on the benefits. This systematic review of 28 peer reviewed journal articles summarizes the current knowledge on consumer acceptance or rejection of active and intelligent packaging, and the behavioral forces behind those attitudes. Articles containing primary data and published in the English language over the last 10 years reporting consumer responses to active and/or intelligent packaging technologies in general or to more specific technologies that achieved the functional goals of active or intelligent packaging were obtained and analyzed for themes in the qualitative data analysis software NVivo. Themes were organized into groups as to whether they identified control variables, moderating variables, barriers or motivations to purchase and the benefits of the technology. To develop a conceptual framework for understanding consumer preferences for smart packaging, the identified themes were integrated with several consumer behavior models including the theory of planned behavior and an attitude model. Consumer perceptions of smart packaging is a poorly covered research area with most research being clustered in Europe and a smaller cluster in the Americas so there were significant opportunities to build on the body of knowledge.

From cheese whey permeate to Sakacin-A/bacterial cellulose nanocrystal conjugates for antimicrobial food packaging applications: a circular economy case study

“…Form the demand side, the new package should be accepted by a certain share of consumers; furthermore, a minimum amount of them should be willing to pay (WTP) an additional price to cover active packaging costs. Evidence on consumer acceptance and WTP for smart/active packaging are scant and sensitive to packaging technology, food product and information on technology 51 . Therefore, specific analysis should be carried out to assess WTP for active packaging formulations presented in this paper.…”

The Effect of Quality Indicators on Beliefs about Medicines Reuse: An Experimental Study

“…Therefore, the attachment of sensor technology to medication packaging will not necessarily solve the overall problem of waste created by medication, unless shown to be carbon neutral. While the current paper makes a small contribution to understanding the public's attitude towards medicines reuse, research on smart packaging within the food industry also offers a wealth of more nuanced information about the impact of such technology on consumer perceptions [30]. For example, a recent review in the food industry unearths not only the functional value of smart packaging (e.g., protecting the content) but also communication value (e.g., perception of safer product), social value (e.g., societal trends towards sustainable living), emotional value (e.g., feeling more confident about the product), and so on [30].…”

Goals in Nutrition Science 2020-2025

“…The emerging food technologies, aiming for gentle, green and sustainable processing, and related benefits ( 229 , 236 – 238 ) offer new routes of processing (e.g., combination processes conventional-emerging or emerging-emerging technologies) as well as new possibilities to use new raw materials such as insects ( 239 ), new proteins ( 240 ), or microbial and cell culture biomass ( 241 , 242 ) and intelligent packaging ( 243 ) (see also below).…”