The gap between stated preference and purchase behavior
Surveyed consumer preference for sustainable packaging is consistently high across FMCG categories globally. Actual purchase behavior is far more uneven, and the gap between the two is where most sustainability investment decisions go wrong. Brands that treat stated preference as a proxy for willingness to pay routinely overinvest in categories where the premium does not convert, and underinvest in the categories where it does.
Where the premium actually holds
Willingness to pay for sustainable packaging is strongest in categories with high purchase involvement and visible packaging at the point of use: personal care, premium food and beverage, and baby care. It is weakest in categories purchased on price and habit, such as basic household cleaning and staple food items, where packaging sustainability is expected as a baseline rather than rewarded as a differentiator.
This is a category-level distinction, not a market-level one, and it means a single sustainability packaging strategy applied uniformly across a diversified FMCG portfolio will underperform in some lines and leave value uncaptured in others.
ESG as compliance versus ESG as positioning
Regulatory pressure (extended producer responsibility norms, plastic-reduction mandates) is pushing packaging change across the board in most major markets regardless of consumer willingness to pay. The strategic opportunity is separating the compliance-driven baseline change, which should be cost-optimized, from the categories where the same change can be positioned commercially and priced accordingly.
Brands that make this distinction explicitly in their packaging roadmap capture margin that brands treating all packaging change as a uniform cost line leave on the table.
A practical starting point
Before committing to a packaging sustainability roadmap, a category-by-category willingness-to-pay assessment, rather than a single brand-wide consumer sentiment study, is the more reliable basis for where to lead with premium positioning and where to simply absorb the cost.