Why is Apple product packaging so beautiful? Check out this T-shirt sent to the U.S. from the Apple retail store in Sendai, Japan. Anything you buy from Apple gets opened with a visual display of white, clean folds, even in Styrofoam and cardboard.
We think there's more to this than design. Buying products, especially technology, often leads to buyer's remorse -- that dry, tight feeling in your throat you get after shelling out $500 for a mobile phone or $2,000 for a computer. Apple realizes that a key part of the sale is making a consumer feel good in the 2-3 days afterward -- when, godforbid, they may return the product and eat into profit margins.
If Apple's average margin per sale is $250 (we're guessing), and if 5% of consumers return products, and if the cost of receiving, reshipping, cleaning, repackaging and restocking products is $500 (all guesses) -- well, unhappy buyers can erode 10% or more of profits. Apple's investment in a few bucks per sale in elegant design might ease the pain for buyers inclined to return goods, and shaving a point or two off returns drives higher EBITDA.
We recently purchased an iMac for home use. Everything was gorgeous -- until we tried to hook in to an old wireless modem. Suddenly we're on the phone to customer service, making a trip back to the store, punching in arcane codes (OK, we're not smart at this type of thing) ... but the beauteous shiny iMac, and the clean packaging that introduced it, made us feel just a bit better. Eventually, Safari booted and we cheered.
The lesson for marketers of all stripes is to consider the touchpoints immediately after the sale. Anything you can do to ease the new customer aboard will have big payoffs downstream. Plus, a little elegance won't kill you.
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