Consumers still prefer corrugated boxes over mailer bags for e-commerce deliveries, but why they prefer them is changing.

Ryder’s newly released 2026 E-Commerce Consumer Study suggests that environmental considerations are becoming more influential in packaging perceptions and brand loyalty, even as price remains an important part of online purchasing decisions.

The logistics company commissioned a third party to survey 1,160 U.S. online shoppers in March 2026, covering purchasing, shipping, returns, omnichannel retail and packaging preferences. Ryder describes the study as its 12th annual benchmark of e-commerce consumer behavior.

For the packaging industry, one of the more interesting findings is not that boxes remain popular.

That has been true for several years.

The change is in what consumers increasingly associate with the box.

Protection Still Matters, but Sustainability Is Gaining Ground

Among respondents who preferred receiving online orders in boxes, 32% cited better protection during transit, while 29% said they reuse boxes and 20% considered boxes more environmentally friendly.

Compared with Ryder’s 2025 findings, the protection figure fell four percentage points, reuse remained unchanged, and the proportion selecting the environmental reason increased by six percentage points.

In 2025, Ryder reported:

• 36% chose boxes for transit protection
• 29% because they reused them
• 14% because they considered them more eco-friendly

The year-to-year movement is noteworthy.

Corrugated packaging has traditionally sold itself to e-commerce operations primarily through product protection, stackability, logistics performance and printability.

Those functions have not disappeared. Protection remains the leading reason in Ryder’s survey.

But consumer perception appears to be giving recyclability and material choice a larger role in how the package itself is judged.

That could become increasingly important for corrugated producers as brands look beyond the product inside the box and consider the delivery package part of the overall customer experience.

Mailer Bags Tell a Different Story

Consumers choosing mailer bags emphasized different attributes.

In 2026, 10% cited ease of disposal, 5% said they reused the bags and 6% valued the smaller amount of space they occupy.

The comparable 2025 figures were 8%, 7% and 6%, respectively.

So while easier disposal gained ground, reported reuse declined.

This highlights one of the recurring challenges in e-commerce packaging.

Consumer preference and packaging efficiency are not always pointing in exactly the same direction.

A flexible mailer can require substantially less physical space than a corrugated box for certain products. That can matter in storage, fulfillment and transport.

But consumers may evaluate the package through a different lens: whether it protects the item, whether they know how to recycle it, whether they can reuse it and what they see when the parcel arrives at their door.

That difference between operational efficiency and consumer perception is something packaging developers cannot ignore.

“Eco-Friendly” Perception Is Not the Same as Environmental Performance

There is an important qualification to Ryder’s findings.

When 20% of box-preferring respondents say boxes are more “eco-friendly,” that measures consumer perception. It does not establish that a box has a lower environmental impact than a mailer in every application.

The answer depends on far more than material category alone.

Pack weight, recycled content, dimensions, empty space, product damage, transport efficiency, reuse, collection infrastructure and end-of-life performance can all affect the environmental outcome.

For example, shipping a very small, durable product inside an oversized corrugated box could use more material and logistics space than necessary.

Conversely, replacing a protective box with a lighter package that leads to higher product damage could create another environmental and economic cost.

That is why the takeaway for packaging professionals should not simply be:

Consumers like paper, therefore use more boxes.

A more useful question is:

Can the package provide the protection consumers expect while using the right amount of material and fitting the available recovery system?

That is a much more demanding packaging-design target.

Unboxing Is Moving Beyond Discounts

Ryder’s data also suggests that sustainability is becoming more relevant after the parcel reaches the consumer.

In the company’s 2025 study, 47% of respondents said coupons, discounts or credits toward a future purchase were the unboxing factor most likely to encourage them to shop with the same brand again.

Sustainable packaging accounted for 16%.

Discounts remain the leading factor in 2026, but their influence declined, while sustainable packaging increased by six percentage points from the previous year, according to the latest survey reporting.

That shift deserves attention because packaging is increasingly operating in two roles.

It still has to perform its traditional job:

protect the product through the fulfillment network.

But once it reaches the customer’s home, it also becomes one of the few physical interactions between an online brand and its buyer.

There is no retail shelf.

There may be no store associate.

For some direct-to-consumer transactions, the shipping package is effectively the first physical brand touchpoint the customer encounters.

This is one reason unboxing has become more than decorative tissue paper, custom printing or premium finishes.

Material choice, right-sizing, ease of opening, recyclability information and the apparent amount of unnecessary packaging can all contribute to that experience.

Does This Mean Brands Should Invest More in Premium Packaging?

Not necessarily.

This is where packaging teams need to read consumer surveys carefully.

A “premium experience” does not automatically require more packaging.

Adding additional paper, inserts, ribbons, coatings or secondary components simply to create a premium appearance could conflict with another preference highlighted by the same consumer: sustainability.

The more interesting design challenge is therefore to create perceived value without unnecessary material.

A well-sized corrugated shipper, clean opening experience, simple interior presentation, clear recycling information and appropriate material selection may sometimes communicate more than adding multiple decorative components.

For packaging converters, this could create opportunities around structure rather than ornamentation.

Opening features, tear strips, return-ready designs, optimized corrugated grades, interior fitments, digital printing and right-sized shipping formats may all become part of how brands distinguish the delivery experience without automatically increasing packaging complexity.

The exact solution will depend on the product.

Returnless Refunds Connect Packaging With Reverse Logistics

Ryder’s research also points beyond the outbound package.

In 2026, 67% of respondents said a returnless refund would make them want to shop with the brand again, according to reporting on the study.

That compares with 64% in Ryder’s 2025 research.

Returnless refunds allow a retailer to refund a customer without requiring the unwanted product to travel back through the reverse-logistics network.

From a packaging perspective, that matters because returns can require another shipping movement and, depending on the condition of the original pack, additional packaging.

But returnless refunds are not suitable for every product.

The economics will depend on product value, likelihood of resale, fraud risk, shipping cost and the ability to recover returned inventory.

What the survey does show is that consumers increasingly judge the e-commerce experience as a complete system.

The package, delivery, opening experience and return process are not necessarily separate in the customer’s mind.

Corrugated Producers Should Pay Attention to the Perception Shift

For the paper and corrugated industry, the six-point rise in respondents associating boxes with environmental benefits is particularly interesting.

Corrugated already has an established recycling infrastructure in the United States, and consumers are familiar with breaking down boxes for collection.

That familiarity may contribute to the positive perception found in Ryder’s survey.

But corrugated producers should not treat that perception as permanent.

Consumers can quickly question packages they see as oversized, difficult to recycle or unnecessarily complex.

The opportunity for the corrugated sector may therefore be less about convincing every e-commerce company to replace mailers with boxes and more about demonstrating where fiber-based shipping packaging performs particularly well.

That means combining protection with material efficiency.

For box plants and corrugated designers, right-sizing could become increasingly important because it connects several objectives at once:

less unnecessary board, lower void-fill requirements, improved cube utilization and potentially a better consumer impression when the package arrives.

Flexible Packaging Still Has an Important E-Commerce Role

The survey should not be interpreted as bad news for mailer manufacturers either.

Flexible e-commerce packaging has clear practical advantages for suitable products, particularly where lightweight construction and reduced storage volume are important.

The challenge is that the environmental story may be less intuitive to consumers.

If consumers find it difficult to determine whether a mailer is recyclable, where it should be collected or whether a multilayer structure belongs in curbside recycling, the package may lose points at the moment of disposal regardless of its upstream material efficiency.

That makes clear disposal communication and packaging design increasingly important.

Paper mailers, recyclable polyethylene formats, reusable mailers and other alternatives are all competing for e-commerce applications.

There is unlikely to be one format that wins across apparel, electronics, cosmetics, books, household products and other categories.

The product still has to determine the package.

One Survey Should Not Become a Packaging Specification

There is also a methodological point worth keeping in mind.

Ryder’s 2026 study surveyed 1,160 online shoppers, while its 2025 annual research used a different sample of respondents.

These annual comparisons therefore provide useful signals about consumer sentiment, but they should not be treated as a controlled test showing that a specific packaging change will produce a particular sales result.

Packaging decisions still need actual operating data.

Damage rates matter.

Parcel dimensions matter.

Material and freight costs matter.

Packing speed matters.

Returns matter.

And what consumers say they prefer in a survey should ideally be compared with what they actually do after receiving the package.

That is where the survey becomes useful rather than simply interesting.

What Should E-Commerce Packaging Teams Do With This Data?

The 2026 Ryder findings suggest that sustainability is gaining influence, but they do not provide a reason to redesign packaging blindly.

Instead, brands, converters and fulfillment operations should put consumer preference next to packaging-performance data.

If your e-commerce packaging specification has not been reviewed recently, this is a good time to compare your box and mailer formats against five questions: Is the product arriving undamaged? Are you shipping unnecessary air? Can customers easily understand how to reuse or recycle the package? Does the pack match the brand experience you want to create? And is your packaging decision reducing total system cost rather than simply reducing the cost of the package itself?

A box that consumers like but wastes space is not automatically the right solution.

A lightweight mailer that lowers material use but creates damage or disposal confusion is not automatically better either.

The strongest e-commerce package is the one that makes protection, material efficiency, logistics and customer expectations work together.

And Ryder’s latest survey gives packaging teams another reason to test whether their current specification still does that.

If you manage an e-commerce packaging program, pull your last 12 months of damage rates, return reasons, packaging cost, dimensional weight and customer feedback. Put those numbers beside your current box and mailer specifications. The next packaging improvement may not require a new material—it may start by identifying where your existing package no longer matches the product, fulfillment process or customer expectation.

Last Updated on 01/09/2026 by Jota Machinery