Business Hours & Convenience

 

One of the drivers of customer brand insistence is accessibility. I recently encountered a local bookstore with these hours. It is a new store and I love books so I wanted to explore it. Despite driving by the store a few days each week, I have not yet gone by at a time when it was open. I have now given up on the store. Unless the brand offers a highly demanded item or items not available anywhere else, inconvenient store hours will completely take it out of the consideration set. People do not have a high tolerance for inaccessibility, especial in the era of Amazon.com and a myriad of other 24/7 online stores that can ship overnight. 

Clearly, this is an extreme example of ridiculous hours of operation, but I have encountered many other places with similarly strange hours. If you don't uniquely offer the next big thing, don't handicap your business with limited or strange hours. And even if you are uniquely offering the next big thing, you would do much better to offer as much accessibility and convenience as possible. 

I suspect the bookstore I am citing will be out of business within six months, if not sooner. 

How Brand Experience Can Overcome Time Constraints

Generally, people feel two types of scarcity in their lives. They often feel as though they do not have enough money to do everything they want to do. And they often feel as though they don't have enough free time to do all that they want to do. So, the two scarce commodities are time and money.

And it is now almost a cliche when someone responds to the question, "How are you doing?" with "I am busy, really busy." It seems to be the standard answer to that question by most people these days.

So, how is it that some brands can make time seem to stand still for people as they interact with the brand? Have you ever interacted with a brand that seems to put you into a flow state? You lose all track of time and really don't mind it if you have spent too much time with the brand. These are the brands that create amazing experiences.

As a brand guy, I think of almost everything as a brand or at least as being capable of being branded. So, rock brands and other musical groups are brands. Colleges and universities are brands. Cities are brands. Museums and art galleries are brands. Amusement parks are brands. Restaurants and night clubs are brands. And people are brands too. I am sure you have lost track of time when interacting with some of these brands. And I am sure you have wanted to spend more time with some of these brands.

Convenience and accessibility have become very important to today's consumer. He or she wants everything "now." Consumers have been spoiled by everything being a click away on their smart phones. Long copy, long ads, long anything can not seem to hold people's attention anymore.

And think about how people feel about long commutes. This is a major contributor to quality of life or lack thereof. It's hard to keep up with all of our work. We don't have enough time for our families. We don't have enough time for our hobbies. We don't have enough time to exercise. Our vacations are too short. We don't have enough time for ourselves.

And yet, some brands seem not only to overcome this feeling of scarcity but literally to pull you into an experience for which time doesn't seem to matter.

Not many brick and mortar retailers can compete with online retailers regarding price or selection or being open 24/7. So brick and mortar retailers must create a better experience to attract and retain customers. Von Maur department stores feature pianists playing music in the stores. Bass Pro Shops have large aquariums filled with fish.

And let me tell you about my experience with Tesla. I love riding in the car so much (because of the quiet, high performance road handling, the acceleration, the spacious uncluttered interior, the Tesla streaming radio and the amazing sound system) that I look for excuses to get in the car and drive around. Now that I have a Tesla, I am running many more errands for my wife. "Honey, is there anything you need me to pick up while I am out?" "Where are you going?" "I don't know. Just out." To create a legitimate purpose for spending more time in the car, I have taken to driving for Uber and Lyft. It results in barely a blip in my income, but it allows me to drive around in my spare time and to share the experience with others who may not have experienced riding in a Tesla before.

The point of this blog post is to encourage you to create a brand experience that is so desirable that people not only do not complain about it taking too much time but rather complain about not being able to spend enough time with the brand. What sort of brand is yours? One that people are too busy to interact with? Or one that people can't wait to interact with? And one, that when they do interact with it, they lose all track of time.

Peeling Back the Onion

Sometimes, in brand research, one must continue to "peel back the onion" to better understand what the consumer is really saying. Recently, a client of mine (a heath care system) discovered that it was delivering well against convenience and accessibility. They discovered this through a quantitative brand equity measurement survey. Multiple data points pointed to this strength, including a variety of scaled response questions and some open-ended response questions. 

What they didn't discover, however, is what this actually means. For that, they will need to "peel back the onion" through further research. For instance, in their industry, accessibility could mean any of the following:

• Convenient locations
• Convenient hours
• Convenient parking, including uncrowded parking, valet parking or free parking
• 24/7 accessibility in a non-hospital setting
• A wide variety of payment options, including installment payments
• A wide variety of insurances accepted including Medicare and Medicaid
• Accepting patients who cannot pay
• Short wait times
• Immediate access to doctors
• Easy access to patient records
• 24/7 waiting or lobby areas
• Quality on-site food
• Easy admissions process
• Clear wayfinding
• Easy website navigation
• Handicap accessibility such as parking spaces, ramps and elevators
• Accommodations for deaf and blind people

If this client wants to tout (and even enhance) its accessibility, it needs to know how it is perceived to be accessible. A marketer is very lazy if he or she stops at the concept of accessibility without exploring what that actually means. How else can he or she talk about it properly on behalf of the brand and how else would he or she know to whom this might have the greatest appeal?

When conducting brand research dig deep enough to fully understand what the customer is telling you. This may require "peeling back the onion" in a number of steps.

Branding and Accessibility

Accessibility is one of the five drivers of customer brand insistence in our proprietary BrandInsistence (SM) brand equity measurement system. Accessibility is critical in converting preference or need into an actual purchase. Time and money are the scarce commodities in most peoples' lives, therefore accessibility is related to locations, hours of operation and price. If the brand you prefer is available somewhere near or convenient to you during the hours when you are available and at a reasonable price, you will very likely make the purchase.

A few decades ago, Hallmark discovered that its card shops' typical hours of operation (9 am to 6 pm) was limiting their revenue potential, especially compared to grocery stores and other mass merchandisers that had much more convenient hours.

Amazon.com (and the Internet in general) shook up the retail world for a number of reasons, not the least of which was 24/7 accessibility. 

In real estate, the mantra is "location, location, location."

I have been frustrated visiting a city on a Tuesday or Wednesday only to find that its public art museum is closed. Most (so I assume all) museums are closed on Mondays but open other days of the week.

It took me quite a while to realize that a fine dining restaurant in my town is only open on Thursday evenings. (It caters events the other nights of a week.) In the interim, I largely ignored that nearby restaurant because it was mostly closed. 

Recently, I happened upon a place whose hours are Friday through Tuesday from 10 am to 2 pm.

My point in all of this is that your brand must be accessible. Ideally, it is available 24/7 at a reasonable price. 

Here are two other blog posts that I have written on brand accessibility: 1 and 2.

Brand Accessibility

BrandForward's BrandInsistence (SM) brand equity measurement system recognizes that there are five drivers of customer brand insistence - awareness, relevant differentiation, value, accessibility and emotional connection. I talk a lot about relevant differentiation in the context of brand positioning and every brand manager knows that brand awareness is the keystone of brand equity building. I haven't talked much about brand accessibility, however. 

If a person has a preference for a particular brand, he will consistently purchase that brand if it is equally accessible to competitive brands. If it is not, he may forgo the purchase until it is accessible or he may purchase a competitive brand instead. 

I typically use two examples of this. One is someone who slightly prefers Coca-Cola over Pepsi. As long as there is Coca-Cola in the nearby vending machine, he will purchase Coca-Cola. If he encounters an out-of-stock situation for Coca-Cola in that machine on a given day, he has several options - search out another source of Coca-Cola, purchase Pepsi instead or forego a soft drink altogether. 

Another example I use is a high school student choosing a college. If her preference is Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) but that school rejects her, that option is inaccessible to her. If RISD places her on the waiting list, her accessibility to that school is diminished. If she is accepted but with a year's deferral, again her accessibility is diminished. Finally, if she is accepted but that school provides an inferior financial aid package compared to her other options, again her accessibility is diminished. In any of those situations, she may choose to go to her second choice school instead of Rhode Island School of Design.

I recently purchased a Hobie Getaway sailboat. I live in a suburb of Rochester, NY. When I tried to go online to order needed parts for the sailboat, I discovered that Hobie (Hobie.com) does not allow one to order parts directly from them. One must go through an authorized local dealer. Further, I discovered that the nearest two authorized dealers were 67 miles away in Buffalo and 76 miles away in Syracuse. I do not feel like driving an hour and fifteen minutes in each direction paying New York State Thruway tolls to buy a couple of parts. For fun, I looked up the closest Hobie dealer to Yellowknife, Canada. Hobie's dealer locator returned the information that the "nearby dealer" is 616 miles away in Edmonton, AB. I understand the wish to support local dealers, but when there are no local dealers, one should have other options. Mine will be to purchase non-Hobie parts at one of my local marine supply stores (of which there are several in Rochester). 

Also, see this blog post on the Power of Distribution.

The Power of Distribution

Distribution contributes to customer brand insistence in two ways. First, it increases brand accessibility so that brand preference is more likely to be converted to brand purchase. But, more importantly, it increases brand exposure, which increases brand awareness. So distribution affects two of the five customer brand insistence drivers. Brands such as Coca-Cola, KFC, McDonalds and Starbucks rely on this as an important driver of their brands’ successes.

If you slightly preferred Coca-Cola to Pepsi, and both are available in the same place, you would purchase Coca-Cola every time. However, if Coca-Cola was not available but Pepsi was, you might purchase Pepsi instead.

The only situation in which extensive distribution may not be right for your brand is if it is positioned as an upscale or luxury brand. Limited distribution in limited upscale places can add to the cachet of “exclusive” brands. Certainly, those brands would lose their allure if they were available in the mass channel, and especially in discount chains such as Wal-Mart. Some brands would even suffer from being available in well-known department stores. Consider how broadly and where Armand de Brignac Champagne, Bugatti, Desvall, Hermès, Rolls Royce, Savoir, Tesla Motors or Vilebrequin brands are sold.

But even extremely upscale brands can benefit from increased exposure to their target audiences. But the places where they are available are handpicked to scream exclusivity.

(c) 2014 by Brad VanAuken. Excerpted from Brand Aid, second edition, available at BarnesandNoble.com and Amazon.com.