The Role of Packaging in Automotive E-Commerce

Automotive e-commerce is a fast-growing sector marked by changes in development, big investors and manufacturers in the industry. Believe it or not, according to the Daily News, millennials are taking up and will soon, by 2020, make up 40% of the automotive e-commerce industry through new car purchases. Likewise, as projected by the Automotive Aftermarket Suppliers Association, AASA, the industry is expected to jump by a total of 15 billion dollars by 2020. Talk about the big bucks! A lot of effort is being put in place to realize these big figures, and one of the key segments of the value chain is the packaging of the products. In order to ensure that it maintains its level of fast expansive growth, manufacturers tend to explore a number of packaging principals that they run with on a day-to-day basis so as to ensure they get to reap out of it. The packaging solutions of a product tends to draw a lot of consumers. The Original Equipment Manufacturers, OEMs, take the packaging bit of the process very seriously since it is crucial in the expansion of the value chain. These main principals of packaging are applied to ensure the smooth running of the trade.

• Essentiality of packaging. This entails the security of a product in a warehouse, the effectiveness of transportation to prevent its damage and how the product will be perceived by a consumer at the point of reception after shipping.
• Focus on the big picture. The packaging process of a product has other key factors that are put to play to achieve its success. These comprise freight, labor, materials used for packaging and damage which take up 60%, 20%, 15%, and 5% respectively. Channeling majority of the efforts towards ensuring that a commodity is safe and secure by conducting a value analysis so that they can determine where to put the majority of the effort is a true depiction of this principle.
• 4-pillar approach. The 4 pillars incorporate minimal damages, maximum productivity, ease of accessing the packaged product and proper packaging solutions. This approach puts into consideration the speed at which a product is packaged and its security as well. This increases the productivity of the products up to 30%.
• Maximizing on available transportation space. This mostly calls on ensuring that the space available for transportation is well used to reduce damage to the products and transport a reasonable quantity as well. OEMs have to achieve this by ensuring that the freight trucks carry more products than air, that is, the difference between the box cube and the product cube has to be very minimal.

Packaging of a product tends to be more beneficial to OEMs when these principals are followed to the latter. At times, freight costs may go up due to fewer drivers, a common challenge that packagers face. These can be covered by applying the final principal, ensuring that single transportation carries as many products as possible, but also consider their security and damage.