Are Your Products Valuable or Cheap?

Would you rather advertise your products as valuable or cheap? This might sound like a trick question, but it raises an important point about how people perceive your products.

Consider these advertising messages:

"Labor Day Sale with 40% off select merchandise!"
"We have the lowest prices in town!"
"Act now and receive a 25% discount!"

They all emphasize how inexpensive the products are, in hope that more customers will come in for a good deal. This can be an effective way to generate more sales, but there is a risk in focusing too much on low price. Customers may come to see your products as cheap and not valuable.

Advertising trains people how to think about your products. If your primary advertising message is about how low the price is, how would people perceive your product? That it is a good deal, perhaps, but what else? Since low-priced products tend to have lower quality or fewer features, they might imply this is true about your product, even if it is not. Moreover, you are training customers to be motivated by its low price rather than its quality characteristics and the benefits it provides. If customers are not appreciating the quality, they are less apt to pay a fair price or to be loyal customers if someone else were to offer an even lower price.

As a coffee drinker and regular Starbucks customer for 10 years, I have never seen them offer a sale or discount on coffee drinks. They promote the quality and variety of coffee beans, always introducing new blends and specialty drinks. I don't go to Starbucks because it is the cheapest cup o' joe in town; I go because the coffee tastes good.

So it is better to advertise your products as valuable instead of cheap. Promote their quality characteristics and benefits, so customers buy for the right reasons, fully appreciate the product and are willing to pay a fair price. While it is okay mention affordability or low prices, don't make this the primary emphasis unless you have a true low-cost business model like Wal-Mart or JetBlue.