Slacken Consumers’ Undervaluing of Time

For busy merchants such as Benjamin Franklin and you, time is money. That’s why he composed the phrase for his Advice to a Young Tradesman, Written by an Old One.
     For your shoppers, time and money are psychologically different:

• Consumers consider time more valuable than money when thinking how time is perishable. If you don’t use time now, it’s gone forever, but money not used now can be used later. In fact, if invested properly, the money gains in value. When you, as a retailer, establish this mindset in shoppers, they’re more impressed with appeals to saving time than saving money. 
• This appeal also works well when consumers are thinking of time as more subject to having a fixed supply than does money. There’s only so much time available, but a person can use credit to expand the money available now. 
• However, unless the consumer has either or both of those mindsets, the consumer will undervalue a savings of time. There’s a tendency to think indefinite amounts of slack time will become available in the future. If your appeal to the shopper is a savings of time, the research findings suggest you start by prompting the shopper to place a greater value on time. 

     Another example of the perceived perishability of time comes from research at University of South Carolina. One summer, theatre patrons were offered a movie pass. For about half of the patrons, getting the movie pass required completing a survey, which took about seven minutes. So that the researchers could compare time with money, a matching set of patrons were offered the movie pass for $3—no survey completion required.
     Another wrinkle in the experimental design: About half the tickets in each group were marked for use later that summer. The others were marked for use the following fall.
     What difference did this make? For those who spent the $3, the percentage of fall ticket usage was the same as that for the summer tickets. People put out the money, and they were going to get their money’s worth. But among the patrons who earned their ticket by spending seven minutes of time, the season of usage made a big difference. People were significantly more likely to end up using the ticket if marked for the summer than if marked for the fall.

Click below for more: 
Display the Signs of the Times 
Motivate Shoppers Using Their Time Benchmarks