Perception of consumers and companies on the use of sustainable packaging in grocery retail industry

• Autor(a) principal: Valle, Marta Maria Baleiras Couto Torre do
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.14/40487
• topic: Sustainable packaging; Perception; Consumer's behaviour; Company's strategy; Embalagem sustentável; Perceção; Comportamento do consumidor; Estratégia empresarial; Domínio/Área Científica::Ciências Sociais::Ciências da Comunicação

Environmental concerns and the need to incorporate the concept of sustainability into everyday life, have led people and companies to search for eco-friendly ways and lifestyles. The use of sustainable packaging is one of these ways, which has led companies to work on the development of new materials, new shapes, reducing volume and transport, or packaging with multiple uses. Consumers behaviours also demonstrate an environmental concern that leads to more criteria choice of packaging or even the adoption of own packaging usage, namely when buying in bulk. The grocery retail industry, due to the size, has been pioneers in incorporating these principles of sustainability into its business plan. In recent years in Portugal, private labels sold under the retailer´s brand have started to gain market share and are also incorporating these principles of sustainability. The perception that consumers and companies have of the more sustainable form of production and how this impacts consumer choice are recent areas of study. The present work intends to be a contribution to this analysis by studying both perspectives, consumers, and companies on the perception that each one has about the use of sustainable packaging in the grocery retail market. The study on consumer´s perception was performed by quantitative methods applying an online survey and the analysis on companies´ perception on sustainable packaging was carried out through in-depth interviews complemented with document analysis. The results gathered suggest that most consumers and companies are aware of environmental sustainability, perceive it as an on-going development, with results already achieved. Both are aligned with sustainability criteria, but there is still room for improvement, both in consumer behaviour and in corporate communication.