It takes two to tango (Episode Four)

While I was writing these posts I started to pay attention to what points companies focus on here in Argentina when trying to raise interest in their products. Of course it depends on what is being sold, but some general concepts I thought of are:

For hygiene products -both personal and for the house-, performance. Dishwashing liquid will eliminate grease and perhaps take care of your hands. Shampoo will leave your hair clean and make it grow stronger, shine more, look frizz-free, or any other possible hair issue you want to solve. Cleaners for the home will remove all sorts of stains and sometimes kill bacteria. Detergent for washing clothes will leave them clean without ruining the colors.

For cars, performance, lifestyle and status(*). The general idea is to show how the vehicle’s features will make it fit into your familiar/adventurous/spontaneous/fast-lane/(fill-in-the-blanks) way of living.

For food and beverages… well, it depends. I’d say it’s mostly about showing that consuming the product is equivalent to adopting a way of living, whether it is you choose to be healthy or happy and positive or super cool or very exclusive and with a busy social life. Occasionally the product has an additional benefit -besides satisfying the specific need-, like helping you save money, or making your life easier because you don’t need to put too much effort into, let’s say, cooking.

For technology gadgets… it depends again. Some focus on the real-life feeling they provide, like flat screens. Some of the benefits are all about lifestyle, about belonging to an exclusive group... yes, I’m thinking about a certain brand that has become very popular because of its mp3 players and laptops and cell phones. Speaking of which, cell phones have the obvious benefit of making people reachable virtually 24-7; and then all sorts of additional features like cameras and music players and games. One more, digital cameras: what matters is the quality of the image and the versatility of modes (for different lighting conditions, for capturing motion)… a “more emotional” benefit could be the possibility of having captions of situations your life.

In the first of these posts I said consumers show concern about the impact the products they purchase have on the environment… then why haven’t I mentioned companies that emphasize eco-friendly features in their products? (I’m aware there are some, but I’m speaking in general terms). Because what people put first are performance, reliability and durability… I would add price because I live in a country where it happens to be a major purchase driver.

Let’s go a bit further… why is this the set of drivers? I would say mainly because old habits die hard: these are the things that have been important to people for decades, and purchase behaviors take a (long?) while to change. According to some articles I read, there’s another reason: the first green products that ever existed were not as good as the traditional ones. The first energy saving lamps didn’t fit properly into most normal appliances, took a while to turn on and did not provide enough light. The first cars that didn’t use gas had less power than the traditional ones.

We’re dealing with a very delicate issue here, consumer perception, which is extremely hard to change. And it gets even worse: people don’t only doubt the quality of green products, but how eco-friendly they actually are. How is it possible to make the products attractive and to create desire, then? Find out in the upcoming posts!

(*) Thanks for the expert insight, A :)