What Do People Need Most?

People with plenty of money often do not have a lot of time, while people with a lot of time frequently do not have a lot of money. And many people do not have enough of either. It is the lucky few who have plenty of time and money. 

Time and money are the scarce resources built into our BrandInsistence brand equity measurement system. They are built into two of the five drivers of customer brand insistence, value and accessibility. Value has a numerator and a denominator. The numerator is comprised of the bundle of benefits that the customer receives, while the denominator represents how much time and money it takes to receive those benefits. Accessibility also relates to time and money as both of these make anything more accessible. 

But there is a third dimension that I don't often talk about and that is health/energy. You might have ample time and money, but if you do not have good health or adequate energy, the time and money are a moot point. 

In many surveys, when asked what they value most, people will indicate good health. 

So, if one is able to reduce the money, time or energy required to purchase and use the brand, the brand becomes more valuable. Conversely, if that brand itself can give people more time, money or health, it is adding significant value. 

So, when thinking about how you can increase your brand's value, consider how it can increase people's time, money or health/energy or how it can be acquired or used with less time, money or health/energy.  

And, as an interesting note, research suggests that people who value time over money are much happier. 

Brand Value

I have written many times about the five drivers of customerbrand insistence – awareness, relevant differentiation, value, accessibility and emotional connection. Today, I will focus on brand value.

Value has a numerator and a denominator. The numerator is the bundle of benefits that the brand delivers to the customer. The benefits could be functional, emotional, experiential, self-expressive or even take the form of shared values. And it is often some combination of these. The denominator recognizes that there is some cost to acquiring these benefits. Maybe the cost is monetary but it could also be in terms of time. Time and money generally are the two scarce commodities in people’s lives.

So brand value is the ratio of benefits to costs. A brand can deliver an outstanding value, a good value, an adequate value, a poor value or a value somewhere else along this continuum. Ultimately, brand value is a perception. It is a perception of the ratio between benefits and cost.

Obviously, the more valuable the benefit, the more one will overlook the cost. Consider the time-constrained person who is always complaining about being too busy and not having enough time. Even that person will take time out to do something that she enjoys. In fact, the more engaging the experience, the more she loses track of time.

Let’s take one example of a brand that delivers a good value – Amazon.com. What are some of its benefits?

• 24/7 access
• Much larger inventories than most brink and mortar retailers, including products offered through third-party retailers
• Customer reviews that are rated by other customers for their usefulness
• Recommended related products
• Recommendations based on past purchases
• You can browse or listen to content
• For books, you can search the content for specific words and phrases
• Sophisticated search and browsing options

How does Amazon.com fare on the cost side? First, let’s consider its time saving tactics.

• As mentioned under benefits, 24/7 access from any Internet enabled device including smart phones
• Amazon stores your payment/credit card and shipping address information
• One-click ordering option
• Overnight shipping option

And on the monetary cost side:

• All products have discounted prices, often offering the best prices available on those items
• If you reach a minimum purchase amount ($35 for books and many other items), there is a free shipping option
• With Amazon PRIME, you can get unlimited two-day shipping for free

So, compared with many other shopping options, Amazon.com delivers superior value. Interestingly, it also delivers well on the other four drivers of customer brand insistence – awareness, relevant differentiation, accessibility and emotional connection. I have outlined this in an Entrepreneur magazine article and my Brand Aid book.

While most brand managers focus on creating brand differentiation, establishing a consistent brand identity and building brand awareness, they should not lose sight of the importance of delivering a good brand value. I hope this article has helped you think though how to better do that.

Brand Accessibility

Accessibility is one of the five drivers of customer brand insistence in our proprietary BrandInsistence brand equity measurement system.  How does accessibility contribute to customer brand insistence? First, accessible brands insure that brand preference is converted into brand purchase. Why wouldn’t I purchase my preferred brand if it were completely accessible to me? If it were inaccessible, I might purchase a substitute product or brand or perhaps nothing at all. But I am getting ahead of myself. First let’s define accessibility. Accessible brands are brands that are easy to find, purchase and use.

What makes something accessible? Distribution. When a brand has broader distribution, it not only increases its accessibility, it also increases its awareness, one of the other five drivers of customer brand insistence. So increased distribution can increase customer brand insistence in two ways.

If a brand is ubiquitous, there is no excuse not to purchase it if it is your favorite brand. McDonalds, KFC and HSBC strive to be ubiquitous worldwide.  One of the key pillars of Coca-Cola’s success is distribution. It talks about pervasive penetration and being within an arm’s reach of desire.  And, at least in my town, Dunkin' Donuts seems to be opening locations every few blocks, competing with Starbucks for ubiquity.  Hallmark’s closing stores around the country certainly demonstrates that it is in trouble.

The Internet is changing the importance of physical distribution a bit because it enables people to research and purchase products 24/7 from the comfort of their homes. This works better in some categories than others. For example, physical distribution is still important for many articles of clothing because unless you can try the clothes on and see how they fit, look and feel on you, you don’t really know if you want them. Online retailers have innovated many approaches to overcome this limitation, but it is still a limitation.

But, what other than distribution can increase accessibility? If you think about the two most important scarce resources in people’s lives, they tend to be time and money. So anything that takes less time or costs less money increases accessibility. A somewhat counterintuitive corollary of this is that if you can make the experience more interesting, educational, entertaining, exciting, nurturing or otherwise positive, often people won’t mind spending more time. The same thing goes for money. If the higher price is a signal of social status or good taste or some other positive self-expressive quality, a person may not be as put off by the higher prices.

Time and money also relate to the value brand insistence driver. Value has a numerator and a denominator. In the numerator are all of a brand’s benefits – functional, emotional, experiential and self-expressive together with the values it shares with its customers. In the denominator is how much time, money and perceived effort it takes to purchase and use the brand.

High prices can make brands inaccessible to many people. For instance, not everyone can purchase a Tesla automobile. And even fewer people are able to purchase a Maserati or a Bugatti.

I often use the example of choosing a college or university to illustrate the concept of brand accessibility. If a high school student has a strong preference for a specific college, but that college does not accept him, what is that brand’s accessibility to him? How about if the college puts him on the waiting list? Or, if the college defers his admission for a year? What if he is accepted to the college but, after financial aid, that college will cost him ten thousand dollars more a year than the other colleges to which he got accepted?  So price (or cost to the customer) affects brand value and can affect brand accessibility too.

Limited store hours, nearby road construction, overcrowded parking lots, exceedingly long lines or only accepting cash as a form of payment can also reduce accessibility.

Accessibility helps brands grow through increased sales to existing customers and acquisition of new customers. Research has shown that larger brands have many advantages, even beyond the economies of scale and network effects. They have greater awareness, market penetration, popularity, and perhaps surprisingly, customer loyalty.

Even brands that have exclusivity as part of their mystique must be accessible in some way to their target markets.  For these high-end products and brands, price may be the best accessibility limiter. Price will be an issue for most people but not for the target customers. However, there still needs to be some sort of easy distribution method. The Internet is one option. Rodeo Drive (CA), The Mall at Short Hills (NJ) and other upscale shopping districts and centers is another. But how about selling the products at polo matches, equestrian events, yacht races and other targeted events.

Hopefully, this has shown that accessibility is an important driver of customer brand insistence. The other two drivers I mentioned in this article are awareness and value. The two brand insistence drivers that I did not mention (until now) are relevant differentiation and emotional connection. But, I will talk more about those in other blog posts.

Brands Command Time Premiums

Marketers talk about brands commanding price premiums. In fact, the ability to command a price premium is a primary indicator of a brand versus a commodity. Less talked about are time premiums. 

Some people have a lot of time but little money. Some people have a lot of money but little time. Some have neither time nor money. And a lucky few of us have both extra time and money. 

In calculating brand value, the numerator is the bundle of tangible and intangible benefits delivered by the brand, while the denominator is a combination of the time and money required to to interact with the brand. 

Strong brands can command time premiums. When Wegmans or Trader Joe's opens its first store in your area, people flock to those stores, spending a great deal of time there. The same is true of Costco, Bass Pro Shops and a number of other high-demand retail brands. Just as people want to spend time with popular people, they also want to spend time with popular brands. How much of a time premium does your brand command? Do people go out of their way to spend time with it? Do they linger? Do they find any excuse to spend time with the brand again and again?

Time premiums are as much of an indicator of strong brands as price premiums are.