Introduction

Packaging has evolved from a mere container into a strategic marketing lever that shapes consumer perceptions, evaluations, and choices. This chapter situates packaging within that broader marketing role while highlighting sustainability as both a challenge and an opportunity. It then introduces Virtual Reality (VR) as an immersive research and shopping environment and poses two core questions: How do consumers evaluate packaged products in VR compared to physical reality? Are there differences in consumer responses between these two conditions? Addressing gaps in previous literature, which has examined packaging primarily in-store or online but rarely in immersive settings, the chapter outlines a program that compares consumers’ evaluations between the two environments and across three sets of cues (structural, haptic, visual), developed throughout the volume. Finally, it maps the manuscript’s structure, linking the conceptual reviews on VR and sustainable packaging to the empirical studies and their implications for both consumer research in immersive environments and packaging development.