Do you think that packaging professionals are the most powerful people in the world? Consumer behavior expert Sillie Krukow does.

At SPC Engage 2024 in Amsterdam, Krukow said to the audience: “You guys are actually the most powerful people on this planet … You represent the consumer brands and industries that design the choice architecture that consumers all over the world interact with on a daily basis.”

So, how can we leverage our roles to drive sustainable consumer behavior change? Let’s dive into the landscape and principles of consumer behavior change that we can use to build a circular packaging system. 

Decision Autopilot: The Challenge of Behavior Change 

Before we dive into any techniques, we have to acknowledge that behavior change is hard. And slow. And it takes a lot of effort from the nudger (you) and from the (potential) behavior changer. 

Krukow shed light on the uphill battle that is consumer behavior change. Human decision-making, Krukow shared, is controlled by two systems in the brain, the subconscious and conscious system. We’re biologically set to be driven by 90-95% subconscious decisions — acting on our habits, not our higher thinking. 

This of course explains the discrepancy between a consumer’s sustainable intent (“I want to shop sustainably”) and their unsustainable actions (“I bought what was convenient”). How can we combat this? Krukow recommends we direct our behavior change efforts not to some ideal, calm, enlightened consumer. We should instead direct them to people who are stressed out, thinking subconsciously and acting on habit. Think less someone leaving yoga practice, more mom with kids throwing candy in the shopping cart. 

“If you want to see some kind of change, you have to accommodate the actual mindset that consumers are in, and you’re working in an environment where we’re facing complete information overload. “

In other words, we need to meet people where they are. With behavior change principles, we can do just that. We don’t have to appeal to a consumer’s higher thinking, rather, we can inspire behavior change while operating within the constraints of our subconscious thinking. 

Principle 1: “Framing” to Drive Sustainable Packaging 

At SPC Engage, Krukow presented a case study in improving sustainability across a Nordic supermarket chain by convincing consumers to purchase more vegetables instead of meat.

The first behavior change principle they deployed was something called framing. 

Framing capitalizes on a cognitive bias that the presentation of information influences decision-making and perceptions. The same information can be interpreted differently depending on how it’s presented. In the grocery store, they practiced the power of framing by placing yellow stickers on produce. 

Why? Yellow stickers usually signal value or sales to consumers. The result: This simple tactic increased conversion to vegetables by 45%. 

Takeaway: Consider the framing — design, artwork, messaging — that can drive consumers to make more sustainable choices with your packaging. 

 

Principle 2: “Matching” that Drives Sustainable Decision-making

 

The matching consumer behavior change principle, according to Krukow, plays on our drive to match things to each other. 

“We match colors to each other, we match shapes to each other, imagery, and so forth,” Krukow said. “It’s a shortcut for the subconscious brain to not have to think too much.”

For Krukow, this meant employing the Danish equivalent of the food pyramid to show consumers the intended proportion of fruits and vegetables to purchase. They placed stickers inside carts and baskets demonstrating this proportion so consumers could easily “match” their proportion of purchases to the image they saw. 

Takeaway: We can consider ways to leverage visual and design cues that intuitively guide consumers toward sustainable choices by creating subconscious “matching” patterns — be it through visual symmetry, color coordination, or other strategic design elements.  

 

Principle 3: “Priming” Consumer Behavior Change

The priming behavior change principle involves planting the right idea about a behavior just before a consumer makes a choice, planting the idea in close proximity to the decision-making point because we have short attention spans.

In the case study Krukow showed, they “primed” consumers by adding inspiration throughout the store. 

“Instead of trying to educate them to want something new, we added inspiration into the in-store environment,” she said. “Throughout the store, we showed climate friendly, vegetarian, dinner choices — potatoes, pizza, vegetarian meals, for example.”

The result? They saw a 69% increase in sales across fruits and vegetable categories. 

Takeaway: Consider the opportunities for in-store signage that improves packaging circularity, like Store Drop-off signage, for example.  

 

 

Don’t Reinvent the Wheel

“All the right solutions are already out there … We don’t have to invent the wheel or introduce anything new, but we need to be able to understand what kind of existing solutions have the power to influence behavior,” Krukow said.

Krukow insisted that our role in the sustainable packaging industry gives us the power to determine whether or not consumers make sustainable choices by simply changing small things in the way we design materials, present components, and position our packaging. 

“By altering the choice architecture, you would start today by making a massive impact, and it doesn’t require that much.”

Want to get started on inspiring more sustainable choices with your packaging? In 2025 the SPC is working to better understand consumer motivations and behaviors for reuse and store drop-off and across population segments like the Latinx community. Interested in getting involved? Contact our team at collaboratives@greenblue.org