Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the most convincing of them all? A systematic literature review on packaging

Abstract

Packaging stands as a crucial focal point in marketing decisions because, besides being a wrapper for a product, it also fulfills diverse roles: it acts as a medium, affects purchasing behavior, fosters competition, and encourages sustainability. Although there is a vast body of literature on packaging in the marketing literature, a comprehensive understanding of these studies remains limited. This study, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, is the first attempt to fill that gap by synthesizing and integrating this diverse knowledge on packaging and developing a research agenda for future studies. In this study, bibliometric research techniques and the SPAR‐4‐SLR protocol were adopted, and 143 studies were analyzed. As a result, we identified seven core themes from 27 years of marketing and consumer behavior-related packaging literature: package format, features, sustainability, label, perception, experience, and redesign. The descriptive findings and the themes were discussed in detail.