Retailers are more than aware of the importance of efficiency, especially during times when every millimetre of excess packaging can lead to considerable extra expense.

We can help with this by providing custom cardboard boxes to any size and specification you require, which in most cases is as small as possible whilst ensuring all of the contents contained within are kept safe and protected from the rigours of parcel post.

However, there are times when companies deliberately use larger boxes than they need, either as an external shipping box, as part of a stock keeping unit or even for the product itself.

Why is this the case? When should cardboard boxes be bigger than they need to be? And is the era of big boxes coming to an end?

Why Do Retailers Use Bigger Boxes Than They Need?

Many people have experienced a case where a retailer will ship a relatively small parcel, package or product in a much larger box than it strictly needs.

For example, many model kits use very large boxes relative to the sprues inside and especially relative to the size of the scale model constructed.

The reasons for this vary, but there are typically three main reasons why a retailer, shipping company or ecommerce fulfilment centre might use bigger boxes.

Convenience And Standardisation

The biggest reason to use big boxes is that it is often the most convenient way to store a parcel.

Many ecommerce companies aim to group shipments into as few parcels as possible, as this is cheaper at every stage of the fulfilment process. It is faster for a picker and packer in a warehouse to fill one box rather than several, and it is almost always cheaper to post one larger parcel than multiple small ones.

Similarly, SKUs are often designed to most efficiently fill a standard shipping pallet, which sometimes means using larger boxes that are easier to pack in a structured way compared to the most compact possible.

This approach usually requires a range of standard sizes, which by definition means a box sometimes significantly bigger than needed. Whilst bigger boxes cost more, the extra costs can sometimes be negligible for larger operations.

Retail Necessity

Different types of shops have different needs for the products stocked on shelves, and this can have a significant effect on retail packaging and affect how certain products are sold.

A big-box retailer, for example, will often require a product that would typically be stored in relatively economical and small packaging to be significantly larger so it can be seen by customers and easily stored on shelves.

Some items have additional packaging so they can be added to hangers or hooks, whilst others are sold in bigger boxes that fit the standard of a particular retailer.

This was the stated reason why computer games would, for decades, be sold in very large boxes relative to their contents. Whilst the box itself may only contain a handful of discs, disks or cassette tapes as well as a manual, the boxes themselves were necessarily large to match the standard size for certain big-box retailers. 

Marketing And Perceived Added Value

Beyond retail necessity, there is a marketing value to larger packages, to the point that this can become a selling point or provide added value in itself.

Part of the reason for the vinyl revival, despite the availability of much smaller music formats and digital distribution, is not necessarily based on audio fidelity or even any perceived “warmth”, but the value of the packaging itself.

Vinyls fell out of fashion in the 1980s and 1990s because they were too big and bulky as an audio format compared to cassette tapes and CDs, but that exact quality is why they have become popular with not only retailers and audiophiles but also people who do not even own a record player.

They are works of art that happen to contain a vinyl disc, and retailers have started to sell certain products in larger boxes as “limited collector’s editions” for this reason.

Are Huge Cardboard Boxes Here To Stay?

Whether big boxes are here to stay is a complex question, as there are arguments both for and against it.

Logically, smaller cardboard boxes should be the future, for several pivotal reasons:

• The rise of advanced packaging design that allows for smaller boxes to remain strong and protect their contents.

• The popularity of luxury small boxes such as the ones customer electronics companies such as Apple use.

• The decline of big box stores in favour of ecommerce and dark stores.

• An increasing mindfulness of the waste generated by ecommerce should logically lead to the end of big boxes.

For most product types, boxes will get smaller. However, for some types of luxury goods where the box is part of the value of the product, some boxes will, if anything, get bigger.