Across varying marketplace contexts (e.g., grocery stores, restaurants, e-commerce) managers display products with and without packaging, seemingly arbitrarily. Does displaying a product packaged as opposed to unpackaged influence consumers’ product responses? Six controlled experiments and an Instagram study address this question. We focus primarily on food products but show our results extend to non-food products that are natural (i.e., originate from plants, animals, or humans). We propose that, in addition to its physical function, packaging acts as a symbolic barrier that separates the product from nature, decreasing perceived product naturalness and leading to less favorable product responses. Consistent with our theorizing, the negative effects of packaging attenuate when product information or retail signage highlights the product’s connection to nature and are contingent on the importance of product naturalness. Our findings have implications for strategic use of packaging in physical and digital merchandising and sustainability initiatives aimed at reducing packaging.

在不同的市场环境（例如，杂货店、餐馆、电子商务）中，经理们似乎随意地展示了带包装和不带包装的产品。展示包装产品而不是未包装产品会影响消费者对产品的反应吗？六个对照实验和一项 Instagram 研究解决了这个问题。我们主要关注食品，但结果表明我们的结果延伸到天然的非食品（即源自植物、动物或人类）。我们建议，除了其物理功能外，包装还充当了将产品与自然分开的象征性屏障，降低了对产品自然性的感知，并导致产品反应不佳。与我们的理论一致，当产品信息或零售标牌强调产品与自然的联系并取决于产品自然的重要性时，包装的负面影响会减弱。我们的研究结果对在物理和数字营销中战略性地使用包装以及旨在减少包装的可持续性举措具有重要意义。