Service or Quality - which to emphasize

[Steve B]

I have a relatively new business - delivering premium dog and cat food directly to people's homes. No extra charge for the delivery.

My question is - should I emphasize the quality of the food in my marketing or emphasize the convenience of the delivery.

When I'm talking to prospects about it I tend to spend 90% of the time telling them how important it is to stop feeding their pets all the corn and by-products that are in the vast majority of popular pet foods (Iams, Science Diet, Purina etc.). There is certainly a lot more to talk about on the nutrition side and it's more interesting (to me, at least). But, I'm wondering if just as many people (or more) only really care about the fact that they don't have to lug the bags of food around anymore.

I know I can pretty easily communicate both points - I'm just wondering if I have the emphasis on the wrong thing. If I run a print ad - I might only have room to highlight one.

What do you think would get your interest, the quality of the food or the convenience of delivery?

[Spider]

Surely, this is a classic case for testing - run an ad emphasising service and another ad empshasising quality, and talk to some people about service and others about quality - and see which gets the best results.

You can run one ad at one time and another ad at another time, or run the two ads simultaneously. You could alternate the topic at each personal encounter or focus on one for a week and the other for the next week.

Whatever you do, keep accurate records so you can check the responses and determine for yourself what topic is best for the people in your target area.

For certain, what we on this forum think will bear little relationship with the real world you encounter.

[vangogh]

I agree with Frederick. You probably need to test this with your actual market to know which they want. The nutritional aspect is more interesting to you, but this comes down to which is going to lead to more sales.

You can talk about both with customers and potential customers. Even if you're emphasizing one as a selling point, it doesn't mean you have to ignore the other.

Until you know which to emphasize you should test. Run different ads, talk about one or the other with a potential customer and pay attention to the response you get. I'd bet you're potential customers are already telling you which is more important to them and you just have to listen for it.

Also why not ask them questions about how they currently get their pet food. Listen more to the things they complain about in that process and keep asking questions. You should be able to direct the conversation around what you want to know.

[KristineS]

Price comes into this too. Is your food more expensive than the other foods on the market? If yes, I would probably focus on quality. People tend to associate higher quality with higher price, but they feel good about paying the higher price because they're getting a higher quality product.

I agree that asking questions is probably the way to go. When my family had pets, getting the food was never that much of an issue, so I would be swayed more by the fact that the food was better for my pet. Delivery would be a nice perk, but the better nutrition for the pet I loved would sell it for me.

I'm guessing you may find this issue split along gender lines and maybe age lines as well. You'll definitely need to do some testing.

[mattbeck]

It's important to realize that your ads should reflect the venue you are advertising in also.

If you are running an ad in a local weekly paper for example, it might make more sense to focus on the delivery with only a mention of the nutritional aspect.

If you are advertising in a magazine or on a site dedicated to pet owners, the nutrition might be the key thing to grab people's attention.

[Steve B]

Lots of good points here. Testing is on-going with everything I do - in this case, I was looking for a starting point. The only advertising I've done with this was a complete failure. I won't be able to afford much testing.

We have food that covers most price ranges - except for the bottom. Our dog food starts at $34 and goes up to $70. The $34 food is still significantly better than most brands at the grocery store (Iams, Science Diet, Eukenuba, Kibbles n Bits etc.)

[vangogh]

Matt makes a really good point. Some people probably are more interested in the convenience of the delivery and some are more interested in the nutritional quality of the food. You can emphasize either one as long as it's in front of the right people.

Just a hunch, but I suspect the more affluent, the more likely it's the nutritional quality that's important to the person. Again that's just a hunch.

Also let's turn this on its side a bit. A person is interested in the nutritional quality of their pet food because they love their pet. That's the emotional trigger behind their buying purchase. It's not the nutritional quality itself, but love for their pet. So where would someone who really loves their pet spend their time? What magazines would they read?

A thought. When a person goes away on vacation and can't take their pet what do they do? Do they leave their pet with a friend? Hire an individual to come in to their house and take care of their pet? Or drop their pet off somewhere. My guess is the latter group is most interested in convenience and the two former groups more interest in nutritional quality.

Again it's going to come down to testing. Maybe your best approach is to decide where to advertise and then think about the people who would be seeing your ad and which side of things they'd be more likely to be interested in.

[nealrm]

I would see if you can target your approach to the customer. On the web this is easy. Ads for keywords like "Pet food delivery" would click through to webpages promoting the convenious of your delivering food to the house. Ads for keyword like "Quality pet food" would click through to pages promoting the quality of your food. You can carry this on to other aspect of your service / food.

For other media advertising, you would need to review the demographics of your customer based and see if there are any trends on why your service is used. Then match the trends in domographics to the media. Example: if you found that your client over 60 like the home delivery aspect of your service, run ads for the home delivery service in media that serves the over 60 crowd.

[huggytree]

a good question to ask you is - when you select the food for your family which is most important for you? quality or service

i think the majority of people would say Quality....it sure is for my family...your customer will think of his animals food the same as their own.they want their pet to have healthy and tasty food.

Service is just something we all expect, not really something we look for in food. if we have bad service i can see look else where, but as long as the service is whats expected its possibly not even considered.

id strongly focus on QUALITY, but definitely put something in your ad. about the extra service you provide.

I feed my cats whatever...i dont even think about it much...your customer who buys high end pet food thinks of their animals almost like a person....they want to give their animal the best...

your customer is a specific type of person...someone w/ extra money who views their pet as a family member

what does someone who wants the best in any product look for? Quality

i started my business pushing price, then changed to service and have now moved into quality...i find quality gets the most referrals....people expect service(but rarely get it)....they dont search for service, they search for quality. Your product screams 'QUALITY'

[Steve B]

I understand your points HT - but, this is a bit different because nobody else delivers the pet food in this area. The "service" isn't the routine stuff - it's a completely new concept.

I had it happen again the other day - I went on and on about the nutrition and quality of the food, and all the lady heard was the part about the delivery. I know the answer to this question is "it depends". I wish I had a large advertising budget to do a good test.