Tropicana Redesign Failure, Take TwoTropicana Redesign Failure, Take Two

Tropicana Brands Group’s switch from an iconic carafe to a smaller, straighter bottle for the company’s flagship brand last summer has roiled consumers, undercut sales, and perhaps most painfully of all, stirred memories of an earlier Tropicana packaging redesign failure.

In the wake of the 52-ounce Tropicana Pure Premium orange juice carafe redesign, CNN reported in late November that the brand owner’s year-over-year sales fell 8.3% in July 2024, 10.9% in August, and 19% by October, based on market data from Circana.

Much of the consumer outcry has centered on perceived shrinkflation, as the new package holds six ounces less than the carafe. In addition, many of the product’s fans genuinely prefer the design of the carafe, which launched in 2011, to the plainer new package. Both bottles are polyethylene terephthalate (PET).

The redesign's issues go beyond shrinkflation perceptions. (Image: Tropicana Products)

Shrinkflation indignation is just one explanation.

In social media posts, consumers have complained about the new bottle’s smaller size, accusing the brand of perpetrating shrinkflation. One X (Twitter) user wrote Tropicana “shrinks size of orange juice again. Same price for less!” — even though Tropicana Brands lowered the suggested retail price for the new 46-oz bottle.

Either consumers don’t realize they’re paying less for the new package or retailers haven’t followed Tropicana’s suggestion to lower the price — or both.

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“Consumers are hypersensitized to shrinkflation, as they’ve seen brands downsize, offering less product at the same price. That does not seem to be what is going on here, as the price per ounce is close to what it was. It is just less product in the bottle,” says Peter Clarke, founder of design agency Product Ventures.

Aesthetics and functionality are also shaping consumer reactions to the redesign. Tropicana’s carafe design is similar to that of competitor Simply Orange, a Coca-Cola brand. The new Tropicana package, though a custom design, resembles a stock bottle.

“The brand packaging design industry feels that the new bottle with stock cap is a brand misstep, as it has stripped away meaningful features and is uninspiring,” Clarke says, noting that Tropicana’s carafe “conveyed a premium look and feel with the crown-like double-wall closure that holistically integrated into the curvaceous and ergonomic neck.

“The new bottle lacks distinctive characteristics [and] is unable to be handled at the neck,” Clarke adds. “The straight wall and small, rounded-square footprint dictate a narrow label, which requires the horizontally positioned Tropicana logo to shrink dramatically in size. [The logo] now lacks prominence, at approximately half the size.”

Consumers crave the carafe.

Market research by Designalytics indicates much stronger preference among consumers for Tropicana’s carafe design. Numerous research participants mentioned the carafe’s ease of pouring and handling.

The study, fielded in September 2024, included online surveys with 1,035 consumers who had bought refrigerated fruit juice within the previous six months.

The research results showed committed preference of 31% for the carafe vs. 13% for the new bottle. (Committed preference is the weighted percentage of participants who said they’d buy a product rather than the brand they typically buy; it’s a predictor of the package design’s ability to drive sales.)

In its study summary, Designalytics concluded, “The new Tropicana design is at an extreme disadvantage to its predecessor with a committed preference loss that ranks in the bottom 10% of launched redesigns. It will most assuredly result in sales losses for the brand.”

Study participants who preferred the carafe cited its “larger size, classic and recognizable shape, and perceived ease in handling. Consumers appreciate these aspects as they find it easier to pour from and more visually appealing,” Designalytics reported.

The smaller cohort of participants who preferred the new bottle design mentioned its lower price and its size, which is more refrigerator-friendly. These consumers also liked the new bottle’s contemporary, streamlined shape, which facilitates grasping and storing.

Tropicana Brands maintains that it changed the bottle’s shape to make pouring and storing easier and changed the closure for ease of opening — all in response to consumer feedback about the carafe.

Interestingly, Tropicana is not unique in losing sales after a packaging redesign. "People pile on when Tropicana makes a mistake, but the truth is that at least 40% of validated redesigns result in persistent sales losses,” says Steve Lamoureux, founder and CEO of Designalytics.

Consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies’ failure to measure purchase conversion potential early in the redesign process and “guide their creative process toward a design that drives significant sales growth” is a common mistake, he adds.

About Tropicana, Lamoureux speculates, "If they are like most CPG companies, they measured the wrong thing — for example, standout, findability, appeal — at the wrong time, that is, end of the creative process, looking for a parity result that would green-light the project with obvious cost and space-efficiency benefits.”

The Tropicana redesign, even to a casual observer, embodies such cost and space-efficiency benefits.

The new bottle, with its square footprint, offers shipping and warehousing economies. It reduces wasted space in shippers, vs. the shapely carafe, enabling more efficient case packing and more product loaded onto each pallet and truck. Reduced per-bottle shipping costs and transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions should follow.

Clarke believes the redesign’s drivers included both “economic and sustainability pressures. The carafe bottle was larger, with more plastic, and the closure was significantly larger with a double-wall, crown-like profile.” Thus, the new package is both cheaper and more sustainable than Tropicana’s carafe.

Honoring the orange and straw.

For packaging professionals of a certain age, Tropicana’s recent misstep is reminiscent of the brand’s packaging redesign of 2009. The brand, then owned by PepsiCo, redesigned its gabletop Tropicana Pure Premium orange juice carton, changing the package graphics to feature a glass of orange juice in place of the familiar orange-and-straw image.

Brand loyalists quickly made their displeasure known, complaining to the company and on social media. Within the first two months of the redesigned carton’s rollout, Tropicana’s sales reportedly dropped 20%.

The redesign launched in early January 2009, and by March, Tropicana had brought back the original packaging. That’s not expected to happen this time, considering the significant change in package structures.

Tropicana Brands states that it’s “continuing to do what we can to further help shoppers get accustomed to our new look, including investing in advertising and in-store elements. In the meantime, anecdotally we are hearing from many that the changes better suit them and optimize their experience with our product.”

The company also believes its unit sales are returning to normal levels based on recent third-party data.

Something Tropicana Brands isn’t worried about is the orange-and-straw graphic. It’s one of the few packaging elements that was not substantially changed in this year’s redesign.