A ‘convenient’ truth to use in your small business
What do these business ventures below have in common?
- Grubhub
- Blueapron
- Amazon Go
- Yelp
- WeFuel
- Mac & Mia
Four of these are business models centered around home delivery: GrubHub, which delivers restaurant meals; Blueapron, which delivers meal ingredients and instructions to the home, WeFuel, which will fill your gas tank when it’s parked at home or at work; and Mac & Mia, which sends parents a box of children’s clothes – families keep what they like and send back the rest.
Amazon Go, is the new experimental grocery store where you don’t have to bother with any kind of checkout system. Yelp, as you probably know, is a vast resource for online reviews and ratings – you can quickly and easily find the kind of service that fits your needs.
All of these leverage an increasingly valuable resource to appeal to their prospects: convenience. Several social and economic currents are coming together to make convenience one of the hottest items you can “sell”:
- One-parent families,
- Families having children later in life (when parents have less energy!),
- Two-parent families where both work,
- The need to work a second job,
- Digital work connections that extend well beyond 9-5,
- Super-scheduled kids who require rides and supervision,
- Increased commute times, and more.
All of these changes in our lives and the way business is conducted have put a premium on our personal time. We are now willing to pay more for something if it will save us a little time. Consider Grubhub. This service allows you to enjoy a restaurant meal without having to spend the time driving to the restaurant and waiting for your table.
I also believe that many of us now shop online more for convenience than for lower prices. After all, today many stores will meet or beat online prices. And, I’ve seen people crunch the numbers around Amazon Prime and it turns out that for most people, the money you save in shipping doesn’t offset the cost of the service.
However, it’s as convenient as heck!
My question for you today is “How are you cashing in on the value of convenience?” It appears that convenience is a commodity that will only increase in value in coming years. We know that it is very important to Millennials, who will work themselves through the entire purchasing continuum over the next several decades.
I don’t see anything changing that will make us less busy in coming years and I think the group coming up behind the Millennials, the so-called Generation Z, will value their time just as much, if not more, than their elders.
Don’t miss out on the opportunities this gives you. Build “convenience” into the attributes of your product or service today.