How can your choice of adhesive affect the customer experience?

Pricing labels and bar code labels that are applied to consumer goods are often the leading culprits. How can a simple, harmless label have any impact on the customer experience? This can possibly be best described by recounting a recent personal experience:

The other evening my daughter handed me a pair of new shoes she had just bought. Her plea: ‘can you take off the stickers please?’ I duly obliged.

Attached to the sole of the shoe were two labels: one, a white paper label with the price, a barcode and a series of other numbers printed in black ink, and a second clear plastic label with tiny images of a shoe and some text printed in a gold-coloured ink. After a few minutes, I eventually managed to scrape-off and remove the stubborn paper part of label to leave just the sticky residue of the adhesive. Fortunately, the clear plastic label came off in its entirety but once again the adhesive was left on the sole of the shoe. The clinging, tacky adhesive of both labels then needed the application of a well-known ‘multi-use’ spray and the use of a cleaning rag to finally remove the last remaining evidence of the overly tenacious labels.

Job done. Eventually.

The shoes themselves had the retailers’ branding marked on the insole of the shoe. The shoes were undoubtedly mass produced for the consumer market. There was no reference to the country or origin of the shoes. This somewhat frustrating experience, in terms of removing the unwanted labels, is without doubt repeated across the globe on all manner of consumer goods, industrial products, automotive components and many others items.

In this instance, can the customer experience be enhanced? Yes, undeniably. Further consideration should therefore be given to the type of adhesive used on the humble pricing, bar code or product information label.

Photo credit: https://uk.hg.eu/tips/diy/how-to-remove-stickers

For advice or to find out more about different label adhesives, call us on 01473 820060 or email sales@Informproducts.co.uk

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