89% of Consumers Say Packaging Shapes Brand Perception, New Epignosis Insights Report Finds

The Box Has Become a Brand Touchpoint

Epignosis Insights, a market research and brand intelligence consultancy, today published How Packaging and Unboxing Shape First Impressions of a Brand, a customer experience report examining why the moment a customer opens a delivery has become one of the most consequential — and most controllable — brand interactions in retail. The report finds that e-commerce accounted for 17.1% of total U.S. retail sales in the second quarter of 2026, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, up from 16.2% just two years earlier. That steady shift means an ever-larger share of first product impressions now happen at a customer's doorstep rather than on a store shelf.

A June 2026 survey commissioned by VistaPrint found that 89% of consumers say packaging quality influences how they perceive the product inside, and 56% say a genuinely memorable unboxing moment would bring them back to purchase from that brand again. “The box is no longer just protective infrastructure,” the report states. “It is an active input into perceived product quality and price positioning.”

Premium Packaging Pays Off in Repeat Purchases

The report cites research from consumer packaging specialist Dotcom Distribution showing that 40% of shoppers are more likely to make a repeat purchase from a brand that delivers premium packaging, and 51% say premium packaging makes a brand feel more upscale, independent of the product's actual price. VistaPrint's research adds that 64% of consumers have kept a piece of branded packaging after opening it — a low-cost, ongoing form of brand exposure most companies do not actively design for.

But Frustrating Packaging Actively Drives Customers Away

The report is equally direct about the risks of over-designing for theatre at the expense of usability. Citing a 2026 UPrinting survey, it finds that 78.8% of consumers have needed a tool to open packaging at least monthly, and 48.1% have stopped buying a product specifically because of frustrating packaging, while 52.7% said they would pay more for packaging that simply opens easily. “The same locking tabs and multi-layer trays that create a satisfying reveal are exactly what turn into a packaging puzzle when overdone,” the report notes, describing this as fundamentally “a manufacturing problem as much as a design one.”

Five Touchpoints Define the Unboxing Journey

The report breaks the unboxing experience into five discrete stages — arrival, opening, reveal, personal touch, and share-and-repeat — each capable of independently reinforcing or undermining brand perception. It draws on packaging design research showing that reveal-stage elements such as tissue paper, custom inserts, and deliberate product arrangement are especially critical for subscription box and gifting categories, where the interior presentation effectively is the product experience on first use.

Sustainability Is Now an Expectation, Not a Preference

The report also highlights the environmental dimension of packaging decisions. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency data shows containers and packaging made up 28.1% of U.S. municipal solid waste, totaling 82.2 million tons, with about 53.9% recycled or composted. Separately, PMMI, the Association for Packaging and Processing Technologies, reported in July 2026 that 82% of packaging end users are now actively engaged in sustainability initiatives — a shift the association found is reshaping equipment design, material selection, and supplier expectations across the packaging supply chain, not just marketing language.

Getting Packaging Wrong Has a Real Price Tag

The report connects poor packaging directly to returns costs, citing the National Retail Federation's 2025 Retail Returns Landscape report, produced with Happy Returns, which found retailers expect 19.3% of online sales to be returned in 2025, with total retail returns approaching $850 billion. It also cites McKinsey & Company research describing a consumer goods company that redesigned its packaging into a shipping-optimized double-pack format, cutting packaging, manufacturing, and shipping costs by roughly 10% while lifting revenue and unit sales 30% year over year — evidence that thoughtful design can improve the unboxing experience and the bottom line simultaneously.

Industry Investment Is Accelerating

Trade coverage referenced in the report confirms packaging producers see this as a growth opportunity. Packaging Dive reported that Smurfit Westrock's leadership described global paper markets in mid-2026 as among the strongest conditions the industry has seen in decades, running near sold-out on most grades and pushing through price increases tied partly to e-commerce and shelf-ready packaging demand. Separately, Packaging Europe's coverage of McKinsey's unboxing research found that senior packaging executives are increasingly expected to unite design, sustainability, and returns-reduction goals under a single organizational owner, rather than treating them as competing priorities managed by separate teams.

Not Every Category Needs the Same Playbook

The report cautions against a one-size-fits-all approach to unboxing investment. Subscription boxes, beauty and skincare, and premium consumer electronics show the strongest documented links between packaging theatre and purchase behavior, since these categories already carry a gifting or self-reward association. Everyday replenishment categories, by contrast, show a much weaker relationship between elaborate packaging and repeat purchase — for those products, fast and frustration-free opening tends to matter more than a designed reveal.

About Epignosis Insights

Epignosis Insights is a market research and brand intelligence consultancy providing syndicated and custom research across industry verticals including consumer packaged goods, retail and e-commerce, government and public sector services, steel and metals, and financial services. The firm's customer experience reports are compiled from diversified public sources — government agencies, industry associations, company disclosures, consulting firms, and trade press — and reconciled into a single, decision-ready view for brand, packaging, and operations leaders.