Ok, perhaps it’s not up there with the great phrase used by highwaymen “Your money or your life” but, given the lack of portable time measuring devices at the time, watch-theft wasn’t likely to be a lucrative pastime.

Nowadays, in the competition to part people from their cash in less elicit ways, such as when marketing to consumers, there is an infinite number of propositions one could choose.

Is this product going to make the customer sexier, stronger, look better, ingratiate me to others, and so on.

Of course there’s always a price message “great value”, “money off”, “discount”, “low price”, “SAVE!”, etc.

From the amount these price messages are used you’d be forgiven for thinking that they are always the most motivating way to go.

However, research so recent it won’t even be published until the summer suggests that’s not necessarily the case.

Researchers have discovered that when customers are primed to think about time they are more likely to feel a personal connection with a product than when the focus is on money.

It seems that…

Time ≠ Money

Very often…

Time  > Money

In the experiments they sold lemonade with different messages (for example, “Spend a little time and enjoy our lemonade” Vs “Spend a little money and enjoy our lemonade”) and also evaluated the appeal of iPods, restaurants and cars from time and money perspectives.

The results in sales and appeal were consistently higher when the question related to time rather than money .

Only when the products were linked to status (such as designer jeans) did appeals based on price win over those related to time.

Why might this be the case?

• Well, marketing is all about triggering associations. The associations that people have with the time are generally positive:
• Wanting more time… to do the things you want to do.
• The time you spend with something is a reflection of what you’ve chosen to do. What we like is more often a post-rationalisation of what we’ve experienced ourselves doing as it is a conscious action to actually do something.
• Time is associated with choice and freedom.

Money, on the other hand, has more negative associations:

• ‘Cheap and nasty’
• ‘Cheap and cheerful’
• Saving can feel worthy, compromising, and is the opposite of indulging.
• Money is associated with limits and responsibilities.

A focus on money is about what you can allow yourself to get. Whereas your time is what about what you want.

I suspect it is the connection with these associations that means people feel more positive about products and services they could buy or have bought when they are made to think of them from this perspective.

So rather than opting for the price (and in particular the discounted price) communication route, it would be wise to consider whether you can use a time related message instead.

One of the reasons I enjoy working with small business clients alongside the corporate work I do is that it gives me a chance to implement this type of learning almost immediately. So the ad I’ve developed for a local hairdresser who cuts hair in people’s homes is going to be incorporating a powerful message about how she can save her customers time.

Source: University of Chicago Press Release (February 23rd 2009)

Image courtesy: Doug Wheller