Where frozen food packaging falls short - Brief Article

Bowls, Bags and Boxes.

* Bowls are cool and oh, so, spoon friendly.

* Bags are becoming resealable, as well as freezer-friendly, which makes them better than ever.

* Boxes are dated, but they rack up points for having easy-open tear strips and for being compact, freezer-friendly, easy-to-pack and very useful cold-packs for lunch boxes and back packs.

Yet, in spite of all these plusses, boxes fall short of most consumers' priorities for frozen food packages. Instead of saving time and work, boxes made from folding cartons leak and make a mess when they thaw.

And, it is almost impossible for most women to use half a package of frozen spinach, ice cream or pizza without making a real mess or waiting out a thaw.

Frozen food users who like boxes, in spite of their shortcomings, think there should be something like a section indent that would allow them to break off a portion for use now, while leaving the remaining portion intact.

It is not this researcher's intention to chastise frozen food processors for the shortfalls of their packages. In fact, our panel of shoppers recently gave three categories of frozen food higher ratings for packaging than to the food inside the package (see Table 1).

Table 1.

Consumer ratings of frozen food
and packaging quality

                  Food         Package
Category          Ratings(*)   Ratings(*)

Frozen Pizza        2.9          3.0
Frozen Entrees      3.1          3.4
Frozen Potatoes     3.2          3.4

(*) Scale is 1 to 5 with 5 being highest quality.

We'd all like to see the ratings of frozen food much higher than they presently are, but consumer perceptions of food quality in the year 2001 are that most frozen food is just good enough and no better.

And when it comes to what frozen foods offer to today's consumers, the packaging is key to what the frozen food experience is all about. Package ratings that fall below 3.5 fall below consumers' needs and expectations.

If you compare the package ratings shown in Table 1 with Importance ratings shown in Table 2, you can conclude that frozen food packaging generally falls more than 20 percent short of meeting consumer needs.

Table 2.

Consumers' Package
Priorities for Frozen Foods
                                   Consumer
                              Priorities(*)
Immediately microwavable                4.6
Time saving                             4.6
Work saving                             4.6
Clean                                   4.4
Easy to store                           4.4
Hassle-free use                         4.4
Freezer and fridge friendly             4.3
Easy to Open                            4.2
Easy to pack                            4.2
Leakproof                               4.2

(*) Scale is 1 to 5 with 5 being most important.

The Consumer Network's databank of packaging priorities includes 76 attributes of frozen food packaging. The top 10 priorities for frozen packaging are shown in Table 2.

The fact that being "immediately microwavable" is today's very top packaging priority for frozen foods says a lot about how today's consumers think of and use frozen foods.

Some of us are old enough to remember when consumers bought frozen foods because they preferred them to canned and sometimes even to fresh foods.

Today, frozen food is all about convenience. Many consumers would like to see frozen food packages oven- and microwave-friendly.

That translates into immediately ovenable as well as immediately microwavable. It means not having to transfer the food to an oven-safe cooking pan, which must be found, washed and put away.

Hassle-free means different things to different users. For most, it's a way of saying easy-to-handle, which also appears high on our databank priorities list.

The author, Mona Doyle, is the CEO of The Consumer Research Network Inc., an organization that regularly takes the pulse of consumers on packaging issues. She publishes the Consumer Research Newsletter. Contact her at Mona@MonaDoyle.com.

COPYRIGHT 2001 Stagnito Communications
COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group