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Packaging-free shopping disrupts the usual retailing and consumption patterns in which packaging usually plays a central role. When manufacturers no longer offer predetermined packaging, how do retailers and consumers ensure packaging functions? Investigating the way packaging-free actors appropriate packaging functions during use is particularly important because they exert a new power over these functions, which can be challenging to appropriate. The purpose of this study is to contribute to a deeper understanding of why packaging-free shopping can be perceived as constraining.

Drawing from the literature on packaging functions and adopting Miller’s conceptual framework of appropriation, this research uses a qualitative method with a variety of discursive and visual data, including 54 interviews with experts from packaging-free product stores and consumers, 190 Instagram consumer posts and 428 in-store and at-home photographs.

This research shows that packaging-free actors jointly appropriate packaging functions through two modes of appropriation (assimilation and accommodation) each encompassing distinct strategies and highlights the misappropriation that actors can experience, especially when prioritizing one function over another.

This research contributes to the literature on packaging-free shopping, an emergent and growing trend that challenges conventional shopping models. The research reveals dark sides of packaging-free shopping – namely, the damaging effects on health and the environment and social exclusion. In particular, it discusses the ambivalence of the packaging-free shopping environmental function. This research also deepens insight into how individual acts of appropriation may lead to misappropriation.

Eliminating overpackaging is a central question in sustainable development, and poses a dilemma for retailers. Since packaging is a differentiation tool for private labels, eliminating it could limit the capacity to give those labels an equivalent image to national brands just as much as it could be a sustainable development opportunity and a positioning instrument. Drawing on the attribution theory framework, the purpose of this paper is to examine how eliminating overpackaging influences consumers’ perception of products sold under generic and mimic private labels, and their purchase intention.

This research uses a 2 (overpackaging: present vs absent)×2 (brand concept: generic vs mimic private label) between-subjects experiment on a convenience sample of 217 French consumers. The conceptual framework was tested using ANCOVA and mediation analyses.

The experiment shows that eliminating overpackaging does have an influence on mimic private labels’ image, particularly on perceived quality, convenience and environmental friendliness. The authors also find that this influence negatively transfers to purchase intention for mimic private labels through lower perceived quality and convenience. No such effect appears for generic private labels’ image.

This study addresses an issue as yet unexplored in marketing – the effect of overpackaging on private label products – and proposes areas for managerial and societal reflection relevant to retail chains interested in eliminating overpackaging.