A visually appealing multimedia software package does a lot to attract customers who have the consumer choice of a wide selection of products all competing with one another for consumer attention. Your product may be good quality, it may be the best value for money, it may be long lasting and eco-friendly, but if it is packaged in a drab, cheap looking – or worse of all, in an old-fashioned manner, then you may have just lost much of your customer base. This is especially true if you are marketing primarily to the 18 to 25-year-olds to whom contemporary visual appeal is extremely important.
Software packaging immediately conjures up a wide range of CD, DVD, video and gaming cases etc. with which consumers are familiar, however software packaging is also a way of describing a bundle of applications used in industry in a range of useful functions such as financial monitoring, administration, maintenance, installation, debugging, distribution etc. One instance where this is extremely useful is in an industry that requires collating information from a variety of outside sources, e.g. vending or gaming machines. The correct software packaging also prevents downtime by monitoring output and predicting any problems.
Software packaging can also be used to describe an installation system or a system of connected series within a programme. A software suite is a term used to describe a series of related pc programmes.