When you buy any product from market you find them both labeled and packed. Although packaging and labeling may not seem very significant to the product for us, in reality each of them plays a vital role in making a product successful. While both the terms are often used together and referred one or the same thing, they are completely different from each other. Here is how they are different.
If you talk about their function, labeling is used to convey all the mandatory or additional information about the product. Information may include, expiry date, content (with measurement), warnings, etc. On the other hand, packaging is a covering of the main product to protect it from external elements. There can be multiple numbers of covering for the product, like primary, secondary and outer cover. Primary is the one that directly stay in contact with the product content, such as PVC pack, bottle, tube, carton/metal box, etc. Secondary layer covers the primary pack, i.e. in the form of carton covering or PVC covering. Outer layer can be large carton boxes, mainly used to transport bulk products from one page to another.
Design is another factor that separates packaging and labeling. Labels are never designed as their purpose is to communicate information. These are just simple pieces of paper pasted on the pack or are just in the form of direct printing on the pack. Though, sometimes the ways of listing ingredients or the other information may change. Conversely, packaging has a significant role in establishing identity of a brand and its product. Therefore, it is typically designed so as to make them visually more distinctive and attractive.
Packaging and labeling also involves legal rules, regulations and restrictions. When any product is supplied in the market, there are certain set of rules to be followed by the manufacturer. For every product category, the kind of regulations differs greatly. If you take food items, it has to be labeled with nutritional information. Similarly, for perishable items, packaging has to be done under certain safety norms. Usually, for food items and pharmaceuticals, restrictions and regulations are stricter than any product item in the market.
While packaging and labeling vary in so many ways, they are vital features of a product that determine its quality. This is because, it is a usual tendency of a buyer is to look at the appearance of the product and then read the information on the label before trying out anything new. Therefore, it becomes important that packaging and labeling quality is given priority as the product itself.
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