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Taking the Time to Find Time Savings
Posted on 6/11/2012, by Michelle Tartalio
The Chief Shopping Officers - Working moms applying their Consumer Products expertise to their day-to-day shopping experiences.
My family and I are in the middle of a hectic move across town and unfortunately, this means a two-week stay in temporary housing for my husband, my 19-month-old daughter and me. Prior to our move out, I had been cooking up creative dinners from the random ingredients in our pantry in order to minimize the amount of items to move. As we settled in for our first night in our temporary digs, I suddenly realized we had no food, no paper products, no cleaning supplies – and it was 30 minutes before my daughter’s normal dinnertime.
My daughter and I rushed out to the nearest Wal-Mart and started going up and down almost every aisle because I needed everything and I didn’t want to take the time to shop again before we got into our permanent location. I needed small sizes of everything from laundry detergent to milk to toothpaste.
I could not believe how many on-the-go items are in the store if you make the time investment to look around the grocery store. Burt’s Bees Facial Cleansing Towelettes (who has time to wash their face anymore?), Tide Pods (who has time to measure out the correct amount of laundry detergent?), and Yoplait GoGurt (who has time to spoon feed your toddler yogurt?) are all products designed with the convenience shopper, like me, in mind. It’s just that in the past, I was too busy to notice them.
Consumers continue to search for increased convenience in location and in packaging forms. According to a study by The NPD Research Group, one-third of consumers are convenience consumers. Convenience shopping can come in many different forms – which stores you chose to shop in, where you shop within the store, and in the convenience the item provides to you.
Many have said that innovation is the key to growth in the Consumer Products industry. Clearly, some leading companies realize that innovation in packaging can be just as valuable to the bottom line as new flavor variations or brand extensions. If time constrained shoppers just took a moment to observe all the new packaging innovations available to us, perhaps we wouldn’t need to be in such a hurry.
