When it comes to designing products and services, companies would do well to keep in mind the old saying "time is money."

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History suggests that by helping consumers save time or more fully enjoy the time they spend doing something, companies could gain a competitive advantage that could lead to higher sales and profits. Consider the success of innovations such as fast-food restaurants, automated-teller machines and countless labor-saving appliances.

Not only are consumers continually searching for new offerings that might allow them to do more in less time, but growing pressures brought on by the current recession have made them less tolerant of organizations that waste their time—say, by keeping them on hold too long or providing poor service.

We found, however, that many organizations seem to be missing out on this opportunity. A recent survey of more than 1,200 consumers in North America revealed that a mere 5% believe that any company they do business with always respects their time.

Time and Money

The Situation: There's an opportunity to be had in helping consumers spend less time on the activities they don't value and more time on those they do.

The Problem: Many organizations have failed to spot it. Consumers point to poorly designed products and less-than-stellar service as indications that all too often companies don't respect their customers' time.

The Solution: By designing products and services that help consumers either save time or enjoy time more, companies can gain a competitive advantage that may help boost their sales and profits.

Part of the problem is that consumers are more time-pressed than ever, so innovations that may have cut it in the past—say, 24-hour photo processing—no longer satisfy them. And while many companies are sensitive about their customers' time to some degree, few consider the whole picture—that is, the entire time it takes to use their product or service, from the shopping experience through disposal.

In studying the relationship between time and consumer purchases, we observed three ways in which firms can turn time into a source of competitive advantage. They can help consumers do things faster by, for example, making a product easier to buy, use or throw away. They can make the time involved in using a product or service more pleasurable. Or they can design offerings that empower people to choose the mix of time and value that is right for them.

Here is a closer look at these three strategies and examples of companies that have used them successfully.

Managing Time as Price

Helping customers do things faster has been the impetus for many time-saving products and services over the decades. There are many ways to help people do more in less time, but our research reveals four general approaches:

• Doing It for Them. One simple approach is to help people get more than one thing done at a time. The Roomba vacuum from iRobot Corp. , for instance, seeks to get the time-cost associated with the use of a vacuum down to zero by working automatically once it has been turned on. Roomba's promise is that it "cleans routinely so you don't have to," freeing up the customer to do something else.

• Picking Up the Pace. In many cases, consumers just want to get things done faster. The fast-food industry made it possible to purchase a meal in just a few minutes when it pioneered the drive-through window. Other businesses took note: Today, drive-through services exist at banks, coffee shops, pharmacies, liquor stores, and even at certain wedding chapels in Las Vegas.

• Shrinking the Commitment. The expression "I'd like to do x, but I just don't have the time" is uttered with great frequency. A solution is to reduce the "size" of the time needed to complete a task. Examples include speed dating and "lunchtime face-lifts" that takes 30 minutes.

• Ending the Wait. Getting people out of line also allows companies to reduce the price of time in their offerings. Whole Foods Market Inc. instituted a bank-style checkout system at grocery stores in Manhattan, where customers form two to three big lines and move to one of the more than 30 registers per store as they open up. While this process can make the lines that feed into the registers look frighteningly long, it actually gets large crowds through the store more quickly, the company says.

Managing Time as Product

The second strategy for managing time turns it into a product that people want to buy. In our survey of North American consumers, more than half indicated a stronger desire to "buy memorable leisure experiences" than they had three to five years ago, and 70% agreed or strongly agreed that they would be "willing to spend more time doing product or service labor" if companies "could figure out how to make the experience more satisfying or engaging."

The family dinner is an example of something that lends itself well to rethinking time-as-product. Studies have shown that many families wish they could eat more meals together, but they are overwhelmed by the amount of work it takes to get a home-cooked meal on the table.

Dream Dinners Inc., founded in 2002 in Snohomish, Wash., came up with a concept to address the problem: Give people the opportunity to prepare meals ahead of time. Customers go to its Web site and pick from a list of entrees. They then visit a Dream Dinners franchise to assemble pre-chopped and measured ingredients for the dinners they selected. They can then cook them at home or freeze them for later use. The cost varies, depending on the nature of the meals and how many servings are purchased.

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Companies like Dream Dinners ask the question: How do we create quality time that customers are willing to pay for, while reducing the time cost of unvalued activities? In the case of Dream Dinners, the company estimates it saves customers 20 hours a month in planning, shopping, preparation and cleanup time.

Many companies followed Dream Dinners into the market, and sales for the meal-prep industry hit an estimated $370 million in 2007, from $100 million in 2005. Although the recession has taken a toll on the industry, there are still more than 700 outlets operating across the country, according to figures from the Easy Meal Prep Association, a trade group based in Cheyenne, Wyo.

Other examples of companies re-engineering time as a product for their customers include movie theaters that offer dinner and drinks with the film and retailers that offer videogame rooms, refreshments and free classes for bored kids and spouses.

Giving Customers the Choice

It can be difficult to determine whether a customer is interested in saving time or enjoying it more at any given moment. So some companies are putting the "time dial" in their customers' hands, allowing them to switch dynamically from fast to slow, depending on their feeling of time pressure at a particular moment.

The evolution of self-service technologies illustrates some of the simplest examples of this approach. At a chain of sushi restaurants in Malaysia, for example, customers can order using a touch screen connected to the kitchen. Similarly, some U.S. hospitals are installing check-in kiosks in emergency rooms. While these processes don't always save time, they do allow people to see for themselves that the right information is entered correctly.

Online retailer Blue Nile Inc. employs the "choice" strategy when it comes to selling diamond-engagement rings. In many cases, the time cost involved in buying a diamond ring isn't in favor of the buyer—often a young man making a once-in-a-lifetime purchase. Whether he shops at a diamond warehouse or a high-end retailer, he is likely to find the process of eyeing even a few product samples through a jeweler's loupe time-consuming and unfulfilling, and to feel pressure to make a difficult and expensive decision in a hurry.

With Blue Nile, the proverbial shopper in his pajamas can spend as much or as little time as he wants researching the diamonds—by cut, size and many other criteria—online. From there, he can shop for particular settings or rings, pricing out the products with a variety of options. Once he has reviewed his choices, his purchase can be quickly executed. Throughout, the purchaser is in control of his time and the pressure is off to hurry a decision.

While critics originally said this business model was doomed to fail, because people wouldn't go online to buy a product whose sentiment is supposed to "last forever," the company says diamond engagement rings now account for 70% of its overall sales, and it estimates it has a 4.5% share of the U.S. engagement-ring market.


Consumer attitudes about time are a moving target, and companies must constantly reset their sights. Tasks that were once seen as easy are now often viewed as burdensome, such as renting videos from a brick-and-mortar store when movies are available for purchase digitally at home.

That's why companies must continually measure what customers in their industry really think about the time cost associated with purchases and test new approaches, instead of relying only on traditional market research, to determine what consumers want.

Consider coffeehouse chain Starbucks Corp. , originally known for its emphasis on creating a "third place" between home and work. Several years ago, its customer blog revealed consumers wanted speedier service, so Starbucks made some changes designed to shave wait times. Among other things, it eliminated the need for signatures on credit-card orders of less than $25, a decision the company said saved an average of eight seconds per order. It also created a larger, stronger scoop so that baristas needed to dip into the ice bin only once to fill a large blended drink, a change the company said saved an average of 14 seconds per order.

Despite the challenging economic environment, the cost of time built into products and services is only going to go grow. As the examples of innovation described in this article indicate, companies have many strategic options at their disposal if they are willing to think creatively.

— Mr. Nunes is the executive director of research with the Accenture Institute for High Performance in Boston. Mr. Godbey is a professor emeritus in the department of recreation, park and tourism management at Pennsylvania State University in University Park, Pa. Mr. Wilson is a senior researcher and senior writer at Babson Executive Education, a division of Babson College in Babson Park, Mass. They can be reached at reports@wsj.com .