What is Perceived Value?
Perceived value is the perception or evaluation of a product or service by a customer, mainly based on how well the goods and services fulfilled their expectations.
This marketing term shows customers' tendency to evaluate the quality of a product or service compared to other companies and can impact demand and pricing for a product.
Overall, it all comes down to shoppers’ views of the effectiveness or relevance of your offerings.
When a product's anticipated benefits outweigh its cost, it is naturally perceived as having more value. In contrast, if customers hesitate to trust that your product or service is worth the price, this is when your value drops down.
Here is the quick formula to calculate customer perceived value:
For example, luxury brands such as Dolce & Gabbana, Dior, Rolex or Chanel are not solely selling luxury goods but rather the fame and reputation of their brands that its perceived value is high enough to justify its price.
In most cases, people ask themselves how your products enhance their lives or how buying from your brand offers them more value.
In other words, increasing the perceived value of your product starts by answering those questions with different tactics and strategies, which is what I'm about to explain.
10 Practical Tips on How to Increase Perceived Value of a Product
When it comes to raising the perceived value of the products and services, factors like usability, pricing, and branding can have a significant impact.
Whether you are a marketing professional or business owner, learning more about customer-perceived value will benefit you greatly.
Here I will share with you a few ways to increase your perceived value & boost your revenue without compromising your product quality or brand image.
So, let’s begin.
1. Display Customer Testimonials and Reviews on Your Website
Customer testimonials provide a deeper, more emotional connection with your brand and give the overall impression of what your products and services are all about.
Nowadays, most customers research before making a purchase. In fact, 88% of customers rely on online reviews as much as personal recommendations and make their final decision based on them.
In this case, the odds are in your favor!
Taking advantage of testimonials and reviews is a risk-reduction technique to boost your perceived value by indicating your offer is worth the investment.
Displaying testimonials on your homepage or product pages increases your brand credibility and build trust.
Look how Patagonia’s Worn to Wear Stories page highlights customers’ adventures using Patagonia products.
This single page kills so many birds with one stone, among which is enhancing the perception of value.
Displaying reviews and testimonials this way not only demonstrates how much customers love Patagonia but also highlights the company's culture and mission, contributing to overall perceived value.
2. Create Your Mission & Value Social Responsibility
Creating a mission and prioritizing social responsibility helps gain customer trust and make them feel a part of your journey.
These days, people don't just focus on the quality of a product or service they plan to purchase but also on what value they add to the world.
If they truly believe it’s for a good cause, they don’t mind paying the price.
In particular, with the Millennials and Gen Z generations, CSR related to the environment has become a key indicator of brand loyalty and perceived value.
Take Ten Tree as the perfect example of how to boost perceived value with a mission and positively impact the environment.
This Canadian apparel company plants 10 trees for every product sold and provides transparency by reporting mission progress online.
Sending out the message that by purchasing one product from their brand (no matter the price), you are going to plant 10 trees.
Well, that’s a strong motive to buy!
3. Let People Experience Your Product Before Purchasing
Stop telling the prospects how great your service is and start showing them instead, offering free plans and trials.
What people experience themselves is what they understand best.
Not every visitor has the same level of product knowledge as the product owner, and not many of them are willing to spend hours reading on the topic initially.
Therefore, the easiest way to show them solid proof and increase their perceived value of the product is to offer them a free trial.
Many B2B SaaS companies often use free plans and short-term trials as part of the customer acquisition process, eventually boosting their product value perception.
Take Popupsmart, for example, a no-code popup builder that offers a free trial with limited access to visitors, providing a quick and user-friendly experience.
This way, by letting users experience the product first handed, there is a greater chance of purchase and customer loyalty.
As a final note: Try to customize your free trial considering the learning curve of your product to ensure that the prospect experiences it in the most precise way possible.
4. Pay Close Attention to Your Ecommerce Branding
How you display your product or service will influence customers' impressions and evaluations.
The moment someone sets foot in your shop or lands on your e-commerce store, your brand identity is formed in their minds.
This is the power of first impressions, and you better use it in your favor.
You can maximize the perceived value of your product by creating an expertly designed site, packaging, and visually pleasing product pages.
See how Poketo uses eye-catching product pictures, offering a clear, neat, and organized experience to visitors.
In addition, the vibrant colors make the brand and its products appear more appealing to customers.
Remember that no matter how great your products or services as long as you have poor branding and design, your customers may not see through it to the actual value you provide.
5. Offer Top-Notch Customer Support
I can’t stress enough how vital customer support is in boosting your product/service’s perceived value.
No matter how many pieces of articles and video tutorials you’ve shared talking about your product, most people tend to seek human support in times of technical need.
Offering top-notch customer service is how you add value to your product and make it look greater in the eyes of your prospects.
By offering excellent customer service, you're increasing your perceived value and giving yourself the chance to gain loyal customers.
According to Hubspot's customer service report, excellent customer service will likely lead to repeat purchases from 93% of customers.
Using the best help desk software on the market can help you organize, manage, and respond to all incoming service-related requests on one platform, enhancing the effectiveness of your outcome.
6. Trigger Emotions and Increase Customer Perceived Value
Knowing how to trigger your customer's emotions is the key to boosting product demands and perceived value.
Emotion has a major impact on the cognitive process in the human mind, including perception, attention, learning, memory, reasoning, and problem-solving.
Yes, using the power of FOMO, you can create a sense of urgency or scarcity to entice customers; however, what is your strategy to hold on to them?
Emotions are a powerful weapon you can use in the long term to keep your product’s value elevated and make your prospect feel special.
Leverage the story behind your product or service, try to explain why it matters, and make use of emotionally triggering content.
Don't just promote your product; offer your prospects a whole new feeling and way of living.
Sharing how he launched Shopify ecommerce platform just because he wanted to open a retail store in Ottawa due to programming burnout is Tobias Lutke’s way of leveraging emotion and encouraging small business owners to start their journey.
Remember, the more relevant your message is to your audience, the more likely they are to connect emotionally with it.
7. Implement Psychological Pricing
This one is probably the most tricky part of the process.
Pricing can psychologically impact your customer and directly correlate to their perceived product value.
According to the Journal of Consumer Research, specific methods of formatting prices can induce a subconscious response from a customer, resulting in a higher perception and eventually purchase.
Since this method is inexpensive and easy to implement, businesses use at least one charm pricing tactic when creating or adjusting their pricing.
See how almost all the Shopify low-stock alert app’s starting price ends in “99,” giving the impression to customers that they are paying less than their actual price.
You can use this method alongside your product value and, on the plus side, show them how much they will save if they choose an annual plan.
People tend to save money, and showing them numbers can help you increase your overall product value.
8. Prioritize Product Quality and Time Saving Features
It is said that “Time is money, but money can’t buy time.”
Although I agree with the first part of the sentence, I think that money can provide you with tools to save time (in other words, buying time).
So, there you have it, another way to draw attention to your product and increase your perceived value.
The powerful time-saving attribute causes your customers to consider your product more valuable.
In today's fast-paced, hectic world, achieving everything seems almost impossible.
So what if you can convince your customers that they are not only buying a valuable item but also saving time by purchasing your product?
Keep your time-saving key features visible across all your branding and messaging, making sure they are promoted frequently.
9. Use Influencer Marketing to Your Advantage
If you know how to use it, influencer marketing can be an excellent way to boost demand for your product.
Influencer marketing is not necessary to pick a celebrity to do it. In today's social media world, every platform has its famous influencer creating content in different fields.
All you need to do is to research your target market well enough to pick the right person who is well received by them.
This is exactly what Dunkin’ Donuts did by making a special offer for the day to create awareness of National Donut Day.
The brand collab selected lifestyle creators to spread content about the offer in their cities on Snapchat, resulting in 3 million reach, with 40,000 cases of engagement.
10. Design Targeted Promotional Campaigns
Discounts are always a great idea, especially when it comes to preventing cart abandonment and increasing sales.
However, offering generic discount codes to your customers can lower your perceived value and hinder their appreciation.
Therefore, you need to become more strategic about your promotions to overcome this and improve customer perceptions.
You don’t want to have customers buy from you just because you are offering your product cheaper, and at the same time, you don’t want to lose the chance to convert high-quality leads.
To achieve this, offer incentives only to shoppers who need them to complete their purchases and offer a reasonable discount to hook them right then and there.
Leveraging exit-intent popups, you can target your audience at specific times and places like the checkout page and offer them limited-time promotions right when they’re about to abandon their cart.
With targeted promotional popups, you can prevent degrading your customer's perceived value by not giving discounts to people uninterested in purchasing anyway.
Using Popupsmart conversion-ready popup templates that are fully customizable, you can create a promotional intent-based campaign and achieve better results.
Check it out and see how easy it is to create and customize your exit-intent popups with no coding required.
The Importance of Perceived Value
As the perceived value of an item increases, the business or company can charge a higher price or sell more units, resulting in higher profits.
This way, by determining what customers value most, marketing professionals can use the tips we shared to increase the perceived value of their goods and services.
As you can guess by now, increasing your customers' perceived value can be a daunting task, but it is essential, and it can benefit your brand on so many levels, such as:
- Loyal Customers: By persuading buyers that your products are worth more than their price, you’re increasing your chance of establishing long-term relationships with them. However, the trick is to deliver on what you promise.
- Increase Conversion: People with a high perception of your product are more likely to convert and create word-of-mouth resulting in increased demands.
- Higher Customer Satisfaction: Offering targeted promotions or top-notch customer support is a critical factor that leads to a higher customer satisfaction rate. Consequently, a satisfied customer can give glowing reviews encouraging potential customers to buy more.
In Conclusion
As you can see, increasing your customer perceived value will take a little more than just maneuvering on your key features and offering free shipping.
In the end, good customer service, consistent brand design, psychological pricing, and all the rest of the tips I mentioned above could be the value driver that drives your brand's growth.
Feel free to mix and match these tips as you wish and find what works best for your company or brand.
If you know any other e-commerce hacks that work well to increase the perceived value, please share them with me in the comments.
It's always nice to hear from you. 💚
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Most Likely to Cause a Variation in Customer-Perceived Value?
Perceived value depends on many factors and can differ from product to product, even for the same customer. However, generally speaking, cultural differences and psychographic variables such as personality, lifestyle, social status, and interests are the most likely to cause variation in customer-perceived value.
What is an Example of Perceived Value?
Almost all products have real value and perceived risk, and perceived value is the result of subtracting these two factors. Now, when you buy a product supporting the brand with the mission to help distribute clean water in Africa, you are not just buying that product but the feeling. Another great example is SaaS companies that offer solutions rather than software.
Here are some more related topics for you to check out:
- Cart Abandonment Popup Examples to Boost Your Conversion
- How to Ask for Testimonials for Your Business? 6 Quick Tips
- 5 Psychographic Segmentation Examples You Need to Know
- Best Call to Action (CTA) Examples that Boost Sales 2024
