InfoTrends has announced the start of a new multi-client study titled Packaging and the Brand Owner. Within the total package printing market, a contest between digital and analog press technology is under way in the prime label application. That contest is just beginning in two adjacent applications, folding cartons and flexible packaging.

“Packaging is critical to brand management,” says Bob Leahey, an associate director at InfoTrends, “So meeting the needs of brands is the core objective of package printing. It’s brand owners who decide print strategies – digital has to please brand owners in order to advance.”

Packaging and the Brand Owner, says Leahey, will reveal insights into brand owners’ opinions and preferences regarding print, with a particular focus on the label, folding carton, and flexible packaging applications where the main contest exists between analog and digital press technology. Research for the study will include a web survey of brand owners and converters, augmented by personal interviews with brand owners in food and beverage, health and beauty, and other vertical markets. The broad goals of the study include:

• Assessing brand owners’ understanding and perception of digital printing technologies

• Capturing the needs and requirements of the brand owner, now and in the future

• Identifying the pillars for success in meeting brand owners’ needs

• Steering equipment vendors’ product development efforts to match coming market needs

Through this research, InfoTrends will obtain brand owners’ opinions about issues that affect market demand for color digital printing and even analog printing, such as:

• Awareness of technology
• Availability of color digital printing
• Incidence of use of that technology
• Concerns about digital vs. conventional
• Role of short runs in their business
• Role and potential role of variable printing
• Who or what influences brand to choose digital or analog
• Understanding of basic technology
• Wishes for future technology: what they want converters to offer

For more information on the study or to sign up as a participant, contact Scott Phinney at 781-616-2100, ext. 123, or e-mail [email protected].