Benevolent Apps (Urban, Sultan) Flashcards
What are benevolent apps?
They’re apps that provide provide customers with useful information, help them solve problems and make decisions in order to improve their brand image, build trust, and increase sales preference. (rather than directly-orientated with revenue-generation)
Provide 2 examples of benevolent apps.
The Sea Tow provides useful boat navigation and weather information to boaters. This builds trust between the company and customers, increasing their preference and likelihood to use Sea Tow’s paid services (boat towing) should the need arise.
Kraft Foods iFood Assistant app allows users to browse recipes, create shopping lists of items needed for those recipes, and incorporate ingredients they already have at home. The app provides a useful service through streamlining the shopping processes, utilizing their food effectively, and linking in with their revenue-component through suggesting Kraft products in their recipes.
What are the 5 steps managers can take in order to create benevolent apps?
1) Decide how benevolent you want your app to be
2) Design the app
3) Test the app
4) Launch the app with marketing support
5) Link the benevolent app in your overall media spend and strategy
Briefly discuss the step ‘decide how benevolent you want your app to be’
If your firms overall strategy is ‘trust-based’, you should be more the far right of the benevolence spectrum. i.e. product-push is to the far left, and benevolent service is on the far right. If your strategy is ‘promotion-based’, you should evolve towards the right side of the spectrum towards increasing benevolence.
Briefly discuss the step ‘design your benevolent app’
You should design your app much like a products, with go/no go’s and incorporating of focus groups. These focus groups will help your identify and prioritize the functionality of your application.
Briefly discuss the step ‘test your application’
You should test the application to assure yourself of its ease of use and value generation aspects. Glitches and flaws will undermine the trust you are trying to build. You should also identify what exactly is generating value and how the psychological link between the app and your brand is made.
Briefly discuss the step ‘launch your app with marketing support’
Marketing support (money, budget) is needed to raise awareness of the app and promote the downloading by users, a non-marketed app will just get lost in the millions of apps in apple and android app stores.
Briefly discuss the step ‘link your app in with your overall media spend and strategy’
More efficient achievement of goals and optimization of media investment are gained when different medias are strategically aligned. All medias generate trust and preference-building, however the effect is more pronounced when these are linked together and aimed towards a common purpose.
