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PACKAGING & DESIGN WELCOME TO THE With sustainability a concern and space at a premium, the spotlight has fallen on packaging, where opportunities for space saving exist. BWy Peter Howard. hen asked where the most expensive real estate in Australia can be found, many people point to the eye-watering prices of Sydney’s exclusive harbourside mansions. There’s no doubt house prices have been going through the roof, but the answer isn’t found in residential or even commercial locations. Instead, it’s found in Australia’s busiest retail strip, where in 2019 the annual cost of leasing retail space was a whopping $13,900 per sqm, placing Sydney’s Pitt Street Mall seventh on the top 10 list of most expensive retail strips in the world. While Pitt Street Mall is an extreme example, the cost of retail space across most of Australia means retailers face an ongoing battle between presentation, practicality, product range and profits. Sustainability is already a concern and space is at a premium, so packaging has been identified as an area of opportunity for space saving. Excess packaging results in wasted space, which in turn means fewer products fit on the shelf. While reduced packaging helps resolve these issues, it means less room is available for brand messages, product labelling and other product information, all of which are important and – in the case of certain foods or over-the-counter medicines – legal requirements to enable consumers to make informed choices. So, which approach is right? At first, this seems an unsolvable dilemma, but with most consumers now using smartphones, the solution is found in ‘extended packaging’ using the latest 2D barcode and QR (quick response) code technology. With a traditional linear barcode limited to a 13-digit number that simply identifies the product, and the latest 2D barcodes holding 200 times more information, the possibilities are endless and exciting. Extended reach When QR codes began to appear on consumer products in the early 2000s, QR code literacy was almost non-existent. The average mobile phone wasn’t sophisticated enough, the process was clunky and, in the unlikely event a consumer landed at the right webpage, the websites were often not optimised for viewing on a mobile phone. It seemed the technology wasn’t going to succeed. According to a report by market and consumer data firm Statista, in 2018 the number of people in the US who used their smartphone to scan a QR code was 9.8 million, three per cent of the population. While a low representation, this showed only a limited number of people were aware of how QR codes function and likely to scan them. With today’s mass use of smartphones, the Covid-19 pandemic was the catalyst for widespread adoption of QR code technology. While younger consumers were familiar with extended packaging and frequently scanned codes to learn more about products on shelves, many older consumers began to embrace the technology only when they needed to do Covid check-ins. This rapid growth in awareness presents a significant opportunity to roll out QR technology in retail, including in grocery and convenience shopping. With older consumers now embracing QR codes, manufacturers can reach their full consumer demographic, giving up- to-date product information, offers and anything else they want, right at point of sale. Endless possibilities The QR code is a square barcode, made up of black modules (square dots/pixels), arranged in a square pattern on a contrasting background. It is text-based data, encoded to be read by compatible hardware such as image-based scanners and modern smartphone cameras. Earlier smartphones required the user to download additional software apps, something many people preferred to avoid in the early days. 60 RETAIL WORLD APR, 2021 RACE TO PAGE 62