Project Details

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Quantifying the consumer experience of a Niagara water bottle

Company: Niagara Bottling, LLC

Major(s):
Primary: IE
Secondary: MATSE
Optional: ME

Non-Disclosure Agreement: YES

Intellectual Property: YES

At Niagara Bottling, we are a family-owned beverage manufacturer founded in 1963 that produces a wide range of bottled water products, including purified, spring, distilled, alkaline, and enhanced waters, as well as other non-carbonated beverages. Our products are distributed nationwide to retail, wholesale, and private-label customers. A core focus of our operations is continuous improvement in packaging design, manufacturing efficiency, and material usage. As part of our packaging development efforts, we are seeking a better way to understand how changes in bottle weight and structure affect the consumer experience of holding and using a Niagara water bottle. As we continue to lightweight our packaging to reduce plastic usage, it is important to ensure that these changes do not negatively impact consumer perception or usability. The objective of this project is to develop a more holistic and quantitative approach to measuring consumer experience related to bottle handling. This includes creating a test method and a set of quantitative metrics that capture changes in feel, usability, and perception as bottle weight, wall thickness, geometry, and structural features are modified. The approach should be practical and repeatable, and applicable across different bottle designs. Finally, we expect the proposed methodology to be validated using experimental data to demonstrate that it has sufficient resolution to detect meaningful differences in consumer experience between bottle designs. The results of this work will be used to inform future packaging design decisions and lightweighting initiatives.