How to Determine Which Elements of Your Product Strategy will Improve Sales

Cracking The Convenience Code: How The Convenience Quotient Helps Improve Product Sales

2Entire contents © 2008 Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved.

People share a set of universal needs —

satisfy those needs with convenience and you

will win.


What we’ve learned from a decade of surveys

0%10%20%30%40%50%60%70%80%90%

Source: North American Technographics Benchmark Surveys, 1998 to 2008

• The adoption curve takes a certain shape because people share a set of basic needs they approach in a specific way.

• Products and services that meet those needs in the most convenient way follow the adoption curve.

• Those that fail to meet the right needs in a more convenient fashion will not succeed.


What are the universal human needs?

Physiological

Safety

Social/belonging

Esteem

Self-actualization

• Maslow’s Hierarchy is still with us, despite its flaws, because the idea that we share a set of common needs is valid.

• However, Maslow was wrong when he said that needs follow an order — they do not.

• Needs are messy and conflicting; consumers will shift their expression of their needs in response to long-term and short-term circumstances.


People share four universal needs

Connection

Uniqueness

Comfort

Variety


What we know about universal needs

• Everybody has all four.

• But they vary in importance for each individual — we call this a need profile

• Each person’s need profile can also shift.

• As a result:

–People will trade off needs against each other in a search to optimize need fulfillment.


How needs become product features

• Needs serve as a foundation for a product feature decisions.

• Benefits, stated as consumer value statements, capture the need.

• Features then provide the benefits identified.

• Ideally, product features serve more than one need (e.g., a click wheel adds uniqueness, but it also helps people access a variety of music more easily).

Need: uniquenessExample: the iPod/iTunes experience

Benefit:You will feel better than

others.

Benefit:People will notice you’re

different.

Feature:distinctive earbuds

Feature:limited edition

colors

Feature:exclusive

music tracks

Feature:unique click

wheel


Convenience is the bridge over which you meet needs• Regardless of which need you’re helping people meet, you

must help them meet the need more conveniently than the nearest alternative.

• Features that conveniently provide desired benefits will succeed over those that do not.

• Even the best features — if there are barriers inhibiting them — will not succeed.

• We express this in an equation where convenience = the benefits a product provides minus the barriers to its adoption.

Conveniencebenefits barriers

=-


Convenience quick notes

• Convenience is not a need, a benefit, or a feature — it is a measure of how well your features provide benefits that meet needs.

–Example: electronic door locks on cars — the feature provides a benefit (ability to quickly lock and unlock doors), which meets a comfort need

• As convenience increases, more people adopt a product because even if they don’t value the benefit as much as the early adopter, the reduced barriers make it easier for people to justify low-benefit purchases.


We can measure this in a convenience quotient

• A convenience quotient (CQ) is a single score between -1 and 1 that expresses:

–The benefits your product or service provides, minus . . .

– . . . the barriers to its adoption.

1-1

0


How Forrester will help

• Forrester will help you understand

– Why your product or service adoption/sales are unsatisfactory?

– Why a competitors products or service is selling better than your products?

– How does it compare against others and how can you make improvements?

– How convenient your product or service is?

– What specific elements of your product or service strategy you need to change to improve adoption/sales

– What are key barriers to adoption?


3) Convenience Quotient Scorecard

1) Convenience score benchmark

2) Convenience score graph

Example deliverables: The Convenience Quotient


Thank you

Frederic Crehan

+33 6 70 34 5 69

[email protected]

www.forrester.com

How to Determine Which Elements of Your Product Strategy will Improve Sales

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