Convenience Is The New Key To Make Your Brand’s Perception PREMIUM

Working 8 hours straight, hitting the gym, preparing food, and trying to make time for your loved ones… Sounds familiar? You are desperate for some leisure time but how do you make the time?

You might think that cutting some of the chores would be enough but, in fact, you can do that with easy-to-use products and services such as ordering essential online goods instead of picking them up, and controlling all your basic home needs on your smart speaker via Google Assistant. “Hey Google, add potatoes to my shopping list”. We’ve actually done something much more convenient which is we eliminated going to a store and browsing through the internet to place an order. For example, you’ve always wanted to pursue your academic career passion overseas in the field of Data Science but in today’s world, you do not need to go overseas to study instead you can just enroll in Harvard University’s professional and lifelong learning program or just go over the Coursera for Google Data Analytics Certificate program. As Twitter co-founder, Even Williams says “Convenience decides everything.”

Convenience has a long history in marketing, but mostly as a driving force of why we like products: we love things that make our lives easier. However, a new study shows that convenience has an interesting side effect. It can reshape brand perception in surprising ways, as well as influencing downstream consumer behavior.

Convenience = Premium

Simple! Products considered convenient are perceived as more premium than their less convenient counterparts. People look for convenient and time-saving products in different aspects of life. Chang et al. (2012) state that technology-oriented products, for example, mobile English learning technology, benefit from working on a task at any time or place with ease. Let’s take an example of a different product: a gas oven. The oven can be convenient or inconvenient in terms of one-touch operations or faster cooking time.

The product or service is easy to use and reduces emotional, physical, and cognitive burdens, consumers perceive it as convenient. Convenience is consumers’ perception that they can experience optimal value from a product while investing the least time and effort. This causes convenience to indirectly enhance the brand’s premium status.

How To Create A Convenient Product?

Consumers are willing to pay for more convenient products or services, for example, YouTube Premium, which provides ad-free access to its content so you can skip the ad bombardment. One question still needs to be answered, which is how do we create or market the product
customer-oriented?

To start, you need to be on the front line to understand your customers’ needs, desires, and aspirations. which in turn will create powerful bonds of social attachment that enhances customer trust and loyalty. A long-term customer bond with the brand is forged. Keep in mind that consumers are willing to pay more for products with customized features that fulfill their unique needs. Consider two iPad software note-taking applications Good Notes and Notability. Both apps focus on different aspects of customers’ needs. While Notability has the ability to record notes with your voice, Good Notes does not.

Ultimately, if you managed to get your customer to spend more time on YouTube without them realizing it, and your product or service immediately appeals to their needs, you've done a terrific job. And you are aware of what to consider and carry out when making a useful product.

Convenience Targets Productivity

Convenience is the key to building a long-term customer relationship. Products that are perceived as more convenient will have a snowball effect on word-of-mouth, brand trust, and status signaling. This means consumers are highly interested in making efficient use of time. We consistently strive towards greater efficiency in our daily life routines. For example, air fryers are gaining popularity among consumers not only because of the healthiness and taste of the food but also the speed and convenience they provide.

Which one is better, a traditional vacuum or a robot vacuum cleaner? Hint: Consider yourself a productivity-oriented individual. What would be your answer? If you choose the robot vacuum cleaner, you take a much higher incentive for your unique needs. That makes the robot vacuum cleaner position premium in the market. Productivity-oriented consumers perceive time-saving products as having premium status.

How To Position Your Brand To Look Premium?

Han et al. (2010) and Rucker & Galinsky (2008) suggest that consumers spend money on luxury products to signal their status to others. In other words, individuals perceive high priced luxury goods as premium.

Researchers conducted different experiments to whether products’ convenience is associated with consumers’ perceptions of their premium status. In an experiment, they used a utilitarian product (laser printer) as a stimulus and created hypothetical reviews for 190 participants. Their data indicated that perceived convenience can contribute to a premium image of the product. Next time, ask yourself how this product or service solves customers’ issues? Does it make it easier and functional?

In another experiment, researchers used a hedonic and utilitarian product (a tent) and created fictitious product descriptions to find out whether people perceive convenient products as more premium if they find them more customer-oriented. This shows that consumers act on their needs. Ask yourself: does this product satisfy your customer needs?

To make it more applicable, consider a person who wants to buy a subscription for different types of content and platform such as anime, sports, and documentaries. It looks like this person needs to pay a price for each of their desires but a service called “Disney Bundle” comes to the rescue to solve this issue by including “Disney+, Hulu, ESPN+, National Geographic” in a bundle packet. And that is what is called premiumness and brand positioning!

Take-Home Points

• Emphasizing the convenience of a product reinforces a premium brand image.
• Perception is everything when it comes to making your brand premium. Focus on the convenience feature that your product or service provides.
• Emphasize the convenience of products to position it as a premium brand instead of only focusing on other well-known premium cues such as high prices or brand names.
• Combine the convenience of products by targeting individuals working in demanding jobs and high productivity orientations such as lawyers and accountants.
• Always ask yourself: how does your product or service save people's time or energy?