How do in-store promotions affect sales of products in glass?

How do in-store promotions affect sales of products in glass?

How do in-store promotions affect sales of products in glass packaging? Back in January 2020, together with ANFEVI (Spain’s national association for glass container manufacturers) and international retailer Carrefour, we launched a pilot study to find out. Now, a little over two years later, the results are in – and you can read all about them in the latest edition of European Supermarket Magazine.

To explain the campaign, chew over the results and discuss the key learnings, we invited Karen Davies, Secretary-General of ANFEVI, and Scarlette Elizee, Sustainability Outreach Lead for the Carrefour Group, to join us for the our fifth ‘Future Made Clear’ Q&A. They were joined by the editor of European Supermarket Magazine, Steve Jones, as session moderator.  

Missed the live session? You can still catch up on LinkedIn or read our event recap below. 

1. Packaging choices matter 

More and more, consumers care about where a product’s coming from, how it’s produced and how it’s packaged. All these issues link to consumers’ greatest concern: environmental impact, which explains why retailers like Carrefour are working hard to tackle over-packaging and reduce their packaging waste.  

At the same time, we can’t get rid of packaging all together. Packaging is important for food safety and hygiene, keeping food fresh and minimizing food waste. And from the perspective of a brand or retailer, packaging also helps to bring added value to a product and communicate key brand messages. All this means that when it comes to making packaging choices, brands and retailers need to make sure they’re always putting sustainability top of mind.  

2. The Glass Hallmark helps you communicate your packaging commitments 

One way to help your brand make its concern for environmental impact clear to consumers is with the new Glass Hallmark. The Glass Hallmark is a communication tool designed to remind consumers what they already love about glass and the value it brings in pioneering a more sustainable future. 

By adopting the Glass Hallmark, brands showcase their support for everything the Hallmark represents: the commitment to use resources wisely, the commitment to recycle, and the commitment to protect health – of individuals, of society and of the planet.  

3. Education and awareness campaigns have an impact 

With the goal of learning how in-store promotions can impact sales, we carried out a marketing and communications pilot campaign in Spain, consisting of two phases each lasting six months. Within these six-month periods, we rolled out different advertising tactics, some directly in two Carrefour stores in Valencia and some out of house.

Our out-of-house advertising included posters on buses, radio spots and influencer marketing, and our in-store advertising promoted glass on stoppers, shopping carts, catwalks and more.  

The first set of results from the campaign – ‘soft’ data from an on-site survey around remembrance and familiarity – showed that consumers assumed that Carrefour, public institutions and brands either were behind the campaign or at least should be behind the campaign. Not only did 60% of consumers think that Carrefour was or should be sponsoring the campaign, the majority of consumers also thought that public institutions (73%) and brands (58%) should be sponsoring it too. 

These results show that by working together with the glass industry on awareness campaigns, there is an opportunity for all stakeholders to improve their sustainability profile among consumers.  

“The project shows that when our consumers are presented options that are more sustainable and convenient, they will adopt.” – Scarlette Elizee, Carrefour  

4. When glass is an option, people buy more 

We also found that our campaign had a real impact on hard sales. Aside from the advertising campaign, another key pillar of the pilot study was a retail activation. Alongside the usual plastic bottles in the freshly squeezed orange juice section, we offered Friends of Glass-branded glass bottles in a shiny new bottle rack.  

As a direct result of this campaign, sales in the whole category of freshly squeezed orange juice saw an enormous rise of 91%, and overall sales of products packaged in glass went up by 6.8%. Thanks to the campaign’s excellent results, by the end of the pilot test, Carrefour Spain started implementing glass packaging into the freshly squeezed orange juice service in all 205 of its Spanish supermarkets.  

“These results show that consumers will buy more of a product when it’s packaged in glass, and that their purchasing decisions are driven by environmentally-friendly choices.” – Karen Davies, ANFEVI 

Cheers to that! 

Did you learn something about the impact of in-store promotions on sales? Do you have any other ideas on how we can drive sales of products packaged in glass? Let us know over on the Glass Hallmark LinkedIn page. And to keep up to date with our future events and the latest trends in the glass industry, be sure to follow us on LinkedIn.