The Importance of Brand Identification During Peak Summer Retail

There is no denying that busy shopping periods provide retailers with significant opportunities to increase profits. In fact, ‘summer vacations’ ranked in the top four seasonal events for increased consumer shopping last year. To make the most of these opportunities and prosper during the summer peak, it is more important than ever for brands to solidify their presence in an increasingly competitive market.  

As shoppers get ready to purchase their summer essentials, it is critical for retailers to create unique experiences that set them apart from their competitors ahead of this anticipated shopping peak. One vital way of ensuring this is to firmly establish a strong brand identity, an essential tool to forge strong connections with stakeholders and to differentiate retailers throughout the peak retail season.  

A clearly defined brand identity can inspire customers and encourage brand loyalty, with one of the most important considerations being how a brand is perceived by its target audience. To attract shoppers and boost sales during the upcoming shopping peak, retailers need to look at developing recognizable, distinguished packaging and labeling to effectively build these long-term relationships with customers and the wider market.  

Making the Ultimate First Impression  

In short, a brand identity is a company’s image in the eyes of its customers that is easily influenced, ranging from the products a company sells to its social media presence. Packaging has a vital part to play in establishing an effective brand identity, with recent research stating that 81% of consumers said that packaging influences their ultimate purchasing decision. On a more practical level, packaging protects a product throughout handling and shipping to multiple retail locations, ensuring that consumers do not receive broken goods which then need to be returned, leaving a negative impact on the customer experience. 

Often, retailers experience increased footfall of new potential customers during these busy shopping periods. To deliver great first impressions, retailers can strategically design product labels to be more captivating and eye-catching to consumers. Labels are incredibly versatile and may be used in order to provide consumers with product information or further insight into an organization.  

Focusing on Sustainability: How to Leverage Packaging  

As environmental considerations become more important to modern shoppers, there is now a greater emphasis on sustainability and its importance to organizations. According to recent findings, 67% of consumers state that the materials used to package a product frequently impact their purchasing decisions. Accordingly, many businesses have announced plans to make their packaging more ecologically friendly in the new era of retail, with customers increasingly valuing the adoption of ESG initiatives.  

In fact, this focus on sustainability is set to be a permanent feature of packaging considerations going forward. With multinational corporations like Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, and Patagonia all pioneering sustainable packaging, it appears increasingly likely that ecological considerations will continue to top agendas across all industries and sectors going forward.  

Products are Made in a Factory, But Brands are Created in the Mind 

Walking down the aisles of a store reveals that there is no shortage of new and intriguing products available. Because many shops combine comparable goods on shelves, distinguishing one’s offering from the competition is critical to maintaining competitiveness in busy trading periods.  

A well-designed, eye-catching product packaging or label is an excellent way to accomplish this. While the packaging’s size and form may be identical to the competition’s, the design should be unique – innovative designs will capture the consumer’s attention and make a product distinguished from competitors.  

Summer holidays are around the corner and retailers must be prepared to attract new customers as well as strengthen existing customer relationships. Developing unique brand identification can enable retailers to capitalize on these enormous opportunities around the summer shopping season.  

To find out more about how our brand identification solutions can help you during the summer months, please visit https://www.sml.com/brand-identification/