For a few weeks now, a phrase has been stuck in my head: convenience trumps price. It might seem simple, but when you look deeper—especially through the lens of marketing science, behavioural economics, and real buyer behaviour—it has enormous implications.
Let me break it down.
Price: The Most Misunderstood Lever in Business
Businesses—especially new ones—have a bad habit of reaching for price like it’s a magic lever. There’s this assumption that lower prices equal more sales. That if you’re just starting out, you have to undercut or run a discount to attract people. But here’s the truth: price is used as a tool, but it is not a tool at all.
Pricing isn’t something to tinker with casually. It carries weight. Price reflects value. It communicates your position in the market. It links directly to brand perception—whether you’re a cost leader or a premium provider. Your price signals something. And when you play with that signal without thought, you risk damage.
Cash flow matters, obviously. But lowering price to drive sales is often a desperate move that sacrifices long-term margin and brand strength for a temporary spike. Worse, it assumes that people are actually aware of what your prices are, or that they’re comparing them in the moment of need—which most aren’t.
Now, let’s talk about the alternative.
What I Mean by Convenience
Convenience, in the context of business and marketing, is layered. It’s not just about being close by or having fast shipping.
At the foundation level, it means:
- Easy to think of (mental availability)
- Easy to find and buy from (physical availability)
- Easy to repeatedly buy from (sales optimisation)
That first layer—easy to think of—is about how brands live in memory. Think of the biggest brands in fast food, tech, fashion. When you need something in those categories, their names come to mind first. That’s not an accident. That’s mental availability at work. It’s the result of repeated, distinctive impressions over time.
The second layer—easy to find—is about access. It’s about whether your product or service is literally there when the buyer wants it. This includes things like search engine presence, retail distribution, or even where you appear on a shelf or in a feed. It also includes your owned channels: your website, your social profiles, your content. All of these play a role in how physically available your business is.
Then there’s the third layer—easy to repeatedly buy from. This is where sales optimisation lives. It’s the role of CRM, loyalty, automations, frictionless digital stores. It’s how smooth your process is. Are you making the experience efficient? Are you reducing friction for people to come back, refer you, or upgrade?
When I talk about convenience, I mean all three. Together, they define how ‘available’ you really are.
How Industries Work, and Why Convenience Wins
At the most basic level, businesses exist to satisfy needs and wants. And there’s a difference. Needs are stable—think food, health, education, utilities. Wants fluctuate with disposable income—like travel, luxury, entertainment. But both trigger the same process: a moment arises where a buyer needs to decide who to go to.
And when that moment hits, they’re not comparing spreadsheets of price. They’re reaching for what’s easy to recall, easy to access, and good enough.
That’s why convenience beats price.
Think about petrol stations. Everyone needs fuel. But petrol stations don’t just sell fuel anymore—they sell snacks, coffee, car washes, food, and even access to mechanics. They’ve become convenient. And they charge more for it. No one goes there for cheap chocolate bars. We buy them because they’re there.
The same with cinemas. You’re not allowed to bring in outside food, so they offer overpriced snacks. We still pay. Why? Because we’re there. It’s convenient.
And that’s the key: when you are the convenient choice, price matters far less than most people think.
Distinctive Branding: Making Memory Easy
Branding plays a huge role in this. Because mental availability depends on memory, and memory relies on distinctiveness. Think about power tools at Bunnings: yellow is DeWalt, red is Milwaukee, green is Ryobi, teal is Makita, orange is AEG. Each one owns a colour. It’s instant recall.
That’s distinctiveness. And it’s not just visual—it can be sound, character, language, emotion. The more unique and recognisable your assets are, the more convenient you become in the mind. People don’t have to work hard to recall you.
Why Most Research Falls Short
Most businesses think they understand their customers because they have a persona sheet. “Our customer is Sarah, she’s 34, works in marketing, owns a dog, and drinks oat milk.” Okay… but what do you do with that? Not much.
Instead, we need to understand scenarios. Not people—moments. That’s where Category Entry Points (CEPs) come in.
Category Entry Points are the situations where buyers are most likely to think of a category or solution. These vary depending on the product or service, but they’re often predictable, common, and powerful.
We identify CEPs by asking questions like:
- What was the buyer trying to do?
- When did the need arise?
- Why was it important at that moment?
- Who was involved?
- What emotions were they feeling?
This kind of research isn’t fluffy. It gives us real, usable insights. It tells us how to design advertising that resonates, how to build content that people will actually encounter in moments that matter, and even how to structure product or service delivery models. It informs our SEO and SEM strategy, helps us design more intuitive digital experiences, sharpens our sales scripts, and gives clarity to our referral or distribution partnerships. It even feeds into innovation—by identifying unmet needs that emerge through recurring scenarios or by validating business model options.
It gives us a strategy for when and where to show up to be convenient in the right buying moments.
And it’s dynamic—buyer behaviour changes. Think about how COVID forced millions to shop online. A CEP that was once rare suddenly became dominant. Brands that understood this and acted quickly won. That’s the value of continuous research.
A Better Future
When businesses start focusing on being easy to think of, find, and buy from—rather than just shouting louder or dropping their prices—we all win.
We create a world where we’re not bombarded by desperate sales tactics, but instead delighted by relevant, timely, and useful brands that come to mind naturally when we need them. Where buying is seamless, and the right solution feels obvious.
The tools are there. The science is clear.
Convenience trumps price.
These thoughts are grounded in marketing science—what Byron Sharp and Jenni Romaniuk call mental and physical availability. It’s not just theory; it’s been observed across thousands of brands and buyer behaviours.
