Why convenience marketing falls short for products aimed at caregivers
A Texas A&M University study found consumers prefer effort over ease when caring for others.
From parents caring for sick children to friends offering emotional support, most people take on a caregiving role at some point in their lives. Texas A&M University research shows that when they do, many caretakers actively avoid products that promise to make caregiving easier.
According to the study, people often feel like they are doing a worse job of being a caregiver when they take shortcuts and are more likely to respond to products that recognize their effort instead of marketing themselves as effort-reducing solutions.
Ximena Garcia-Rada, assistant professor in marketing at Texas A&M’s Mays Business School, led the research with co-authors Mary Steffel, Elanor Williams and Michael Norton.
When researching the SNOO, a high-tech bedside bassinet, Garcia-Rada and her co-authors noticed negative reactions from people on social media who judged parents who used the device, seeing them as taking unnecessary shortcuts in parenting. Those reactions prompted broader research into why some caretaking products are rejected by consumers despite their ability to make caregiving easier.
“We wanted to understand why caregivers might forgo the opportunity to use effort-reducing products even when these products can provide a high quality of care to recipients,” Garcia-Rada said.
The research team partnered with Happiest Baby, the company behind SNOO, to test two versions of SNOO advertisements on Facebook and Instagram. One ad emphasized convenience and time savings, while the other acknowledged the efforts of parents.
Ads that recognized caregivers’ effort performed twice as well, generating double the number of clicks of ads focused on convenience. Messages like “You give the XOXOs, SNOO gives the ZZZs!” outperformed convenience-driven language such as “With SNOO, get ZZZs with ease!”
Twice as many people clicked on the ad on the right.
“Instead of saying, ‘This product will do the job for you and reduce effort,’ we found it was more effective to say, ‘This product is just one extra tool that can support you in the journey of parenthood,’” Garcia-Rada said. “We documented this preference for effort across different types of caregiving contexts, too, including chronic caregiving like parents to even temporary forms of caregiving, like taking care of a sick spouse or a friend who is going through a rough time and needs emotional support.”
Garcia-Rada said caregiving products differ from other consumer goods because caregiving carries inherent symbolic meaning. The effort itself signals care and commitment, both to the caregiver and the person they are caring for.
Notably, the researchers’ review of SNOO’s social media comments found a significant portion of users viewed parents who used the robo-bassinet as “lazy” or as “cheating” themselves of the caretaking experience.
In another study, participants were asked to write a card for an elderly relative to provide emotional support. Those who made handmade cards using craft supplies reported feeling like better caregivers than those who selected pre-made cards.
Because caregivers equate personal effort with commitment to the people they care for, they may avoid products that claim to make work easier out of concern they are doing too little, Garcia-Rada said.
“We aren’t saying that all marketers should ignore the ease benefits of their products,” Garcia-Rada said. “Our research suggests that when targeting consumers with caregiving responsibilities, it might not be that effective to only highlight the products’ core benefit as reducing effort. We argue instead that it is more effective to highlight that caregivers are doing a lot of things and your product is one tool that can assist with a caregiver’s busy life.”
