CMO Corner: Instant convenience is King

One of the resources which is extremely scarce is time. The lives of consumers have become complicated with too many things to do and with support of high purchasing power, consumers are seeking convenience. Today the technology is continuously upgrading and is able to fulfill the needs of the consumer faster. It has made their life convenient which is “Instant convenience”. 

 

The increase in online buying, connecting with friends over social media, use of smart phones over other things is all leading to meeting the core of need of consumers – ““Instant convenience”. In every category the ultimate winning brand is the one which is able to deliver this benefit. Some marketers will try to deliver more than one benefit in one product and hence the consumers need not use two or more products and hence get “instant convenience” by one product. Research has shown that consumers are willing to buy far more if the delivery can be made more convenient.

 

If a product like hair colour takes one hour for application then the one which can give a faster application will always be preferred as long as it delivers quality. A pen which writes smoother will require less effort and time to complete writing and hence would be preferred, same stance which made the touch phones as big as they offer so much convenience.

 

When marketers are loaded with too much data they are outsourcing analysis to data analytics to make it convenient for them to act on it.  

 

Hence for the product development and innovation teams it becomes very critical to develop product concepts on the variable of time and convenience. As most of the benefits are already getting saturated with most players ready to deliver the same benefit, what will differentiate is which brand can deliver it faster and more conveniently.

 

Overall people will invest in organising tools and applications to help simple their life and provide “instant convenience”, and it’s about time that brands and companies realize that time is real money.

 

(Saumitra Prasad, is the chief marketing officer, Kokuyo Camlin)