A Convenience Truth

Next to price, there is nothing more dear to consumers, seemingly, than convenience. But what exactly do consumers mean by “convenience”? Is it the thrill of finding an open parking space next to the store entrance or the ability to prepare, consume and tidy up after a completely nutritious meal in less time than it takes to read this sentence? And just what does saving time have to do with convenience? More to the point, what are consumers looking for when they say they value convenience? For its part, the food industry (broadly construed) has variously identified and solved the problem of convenience for us over and over again. We now enjoy convenient parking, convenient locations, convenience stores and, of course, convenience foods.

Are these offerings really in step with today’s convenience-minded consumers?

What price convenience?

The thought that consumers might value convenience comes as no surprise to anyone, of course, and when asked simply, “When shopping for foods and beverages, how important would you say convenience is to you?” about two thirds (66%) of them will say it’s very if not extremely important. To put this in perspective, only half that many (34%) feel as strongly about brand name, while a bit more (73%) put as much store in low prices.

Is convenience as important to consumers as low prices? Yes, if convenience is only about one-stop shopping. When asked to choose between the convenience of one-stop shopping and the lowest possible prices, over half appear hard pressed to choose between the two. Still, consumers do lean somewhat more toward saving their dough than wanting everything sold under one roof.

In any case, a wide swath of the consumer population is unwilling to give up shopping convenience in their pursuit of the absolute lowest prices. That makes sense. Even in these hard economic times, we’re exceedingly unlikely to see shoppers drive all over town just to save those last few pennies on a can of peas. But how much would they be willing to fork over in the name of convenience foods? Are convenience foods worth a 5% premium, 10% extra or more? The answer depends on the consumer, obviously. More than one out of every five consumers (23%) wouldn’t pay a cent extra for convenience food, but almost as many consumers (20%) would pay up to 5% extra for convenience food and even more consumers (30%) would be willing to pay as much as 10% extra. Bottom line, somewhere along the way toward hiking the price up to 10% extra for convenience we’d lose half of our customers.

It seems safe to conclude that most consumers will pay for convenience. Whether it’s forgoing the cheapest prices for more convenient shopping or paying extra for convenience foods, the interest is there. Just bear in mind that the going rate for convenience may be lower than you think, especially for certain kinds of convenience.

If You Could Only See Them Now

Often, when we think of consumer demand for convenience, we frame their need in terms of time. But is the attraction of convenience really about saving time or is it more about minimizing effort? Do we prefer one-stop shopping because it saves time or because it avoids the hassle of going from store to store? Just how much time do convenience foods save us and is that what we like about them?

If what consumers actually do is at least as revealing as what they say, saving time may not be the most important benefit of convenience foods. Anthropologists at UCLA’s Sloan Center on Everyday Lives of Families and observations from our own longitudinal ethnographic research clearly demonstrate that using convenience foods is hardly about saving time per se. Putting a meal on the table takes essentially the same amount of time, regardless of what goes into the meal. It’s as if households budget a certain amount of time and work within that relatively unchanging constraint. What matters, however, is the kind of meal made possible, because incorporating convenience foods permits households to use their time differently. Seeing what consumers do with their time makes it apparent that convenience foods don’t buy time so much as allow it to be redirected. On balance, timesaving is a valuable aspect of convenience foods because it reduces the total effort required to put together a meal in a given period of time.

In general, convenience foods are looked upon less as total meal solutions as ingredients to a meal. For this reason, it’s important that convenience foods facilitate the cook’s efforts to tailor family meals to the varying tastes within a household. Well over half of consumers say it’s very/extremely important for convenience foods to satisfy the widest range of tastes (60%) or be easily “doctored” to suit one’s tastes (55%). Moreover, the value of convenience foods is not merely in meal preparation. When asked to choose whether convenience foods should play a bigger role when making the meal than when clearing it away, consumers split down the middle, with about half (49%) saying both are equally important.

It’s About Time, Or Is It?

Throughout our brief examination of the value of convenience to consumers, the dimension of timesaving has figured prominently. This was no accident. The legacy of industrialization, which revolutionized traditional notions of time-productivity, has insinuated itself into nearly every facet of modern life. Small wonder that convenience and saving time have come to mean the same thing to so many. But today’s consumer never struggles to find time for agreeable activities. Five minutes of nerve-shattering frustration lasts interminably longer than five hours of unadulterated bliss. Whether the value of convenience has anything to do with timesaving, therefore, depends heavily on how the time saved would have been spent.

Simplifying meal preparation and clean up, removing drudgery, and facilitating personalization should be the principal design goals of convenience foods. Convenience, for consumers, is defined by the quality of the time they save. Connecting notions of less time in the kitchen with more time with family, and less stress about cleaning house with increased energy for recreational activities means far more to consumers than the calculated minutes and seconds they can save.