Many people mistake value as something that means general conceptions or moral ideas. However, sociologists have a very defined use of the term, focusing on the connotations of goodness or righteousness. Values are important not just for businesses, but for individuals, and have a major impact on the behavior and attitude of a business.

Values are simply representative of the primary convictions that drive humans forward. In this article, we shall discuss the different types of values, and also focus on the definition and give some examples on how values differ from one another.

What Are Values?

In the world of organizational behavior, values are defined as the collective conception of what can be considered desirable, bad, good, or improper. For instance, in business, some common values include innovations, inclusivity, and fairness. According to a popular sociologist by the name of M. Haralambos, a value is simply a belief that anything particular is either desirable or good.

In the world of business, values are what define a company. Values play an important role in how the company operates and is perceived by its employees, its competitors, and its customers. Without a defined set of values, a business simply can’t afford to succeed in an extremely competitive industry.

The values of the business are the way it’s perceived. However, understanding the values definition and examples is important. There are essentially five types of values that a person can look at from an economic perspective to understand their business model better. Here are the most common types of values that one should know about.

Commercial Value

Commercial value simply focuses on how an item can increase the profit or revenue generated by the company. It’s often considered to be the most direct kind of value, and usually focuses on the revenue generation of the product. Ideally, if all other things in the equation are kept equal, the work should result in a net profit for the company.

For instance, an item will be commercially valuable if, when delivered, the customers are willing to pay to get their hands on it. This could be an add-on, or it could be a new feature or version. It could either be downloadable content, creative content, or something that simply adds more value.

When determining the commercial value of the product, the key question to consider is just how that particular item can increase the revenue or the net profit of the company. If the answer is easy and straightforward, it’s obvious that the product will deliver greater commercial value. If it’s not as simple as you think, you might be dealing with a product that is not commercially valuable at all.

Efficiency Value

Then, you have to consider the efficiency value as well. Not all products or services are likely to generate maximum revenue. However, there are certain items that can have a direct impact on the profit generated by the company by mitigating the costs of delivery, maintenance, and production.

Essentially, these are the items that automate, reduce, or simplify work that takes place during the development of a specific product. With their help, other production practices become more efficient. Essentially, these items increase the cost efficiency of your products. You will end up spending less money while generating similar value.

For instance, if you make a minor change to the codebase that allows you to run a service without using as many servers, you are generating greater value in terms of efficiency. Generating efficiency value is important in order to gain an important step up against the competition.

Market Value

If people don’t know about your product or service, it’s simply not going to be successful at all. In most cases, product development focuses on working to increase awareness about a product, its qualitative points, and to create a clear distinction between this product and other competitors. This is what’s known as market value.

Marketing activities are perhaps the most obvious example of this. For instance, setting up a landing page and writing engaging copy about a product that promotes the service or product, or launching a marketing campaign on LinkedIn or any other platform is a great way to generate more market value. Even something as simple as recording a podcast or writing a podcast detailing the positive features is an example of enhancing market value.

For the perspective of a software developer, marketing value could be the equivalent of highlighting new features of the program or porting it from one platform to another. When looking at ways to generate market value, the most important question to ask is just how this product helps with attracting more customers or users.

Customer Value

Customer value is determined based on the loyalty that a customer is willing to show to your products. For instance, even if your product is cost-efficient, is generating high revenue, and is also quite popular, it can be difficult to make it grow unless your clients are willing to stick around.

If they are constantly moving away and product churn is high, you need to rethink your objectives. Essentially, customer value is all about making your product “stick.” A simple way to work on improving customer value is to focus on optimizing the user experience. When your product is easier for the user to understand and use, it automatically becomes easier to stick with.

More importantly, you also need to focus on introducing new changes and improvements in your products. These are going to help you grow the product and get more feedback from your consumers. Care should be taken to ensure that the changes are not wildly disorienting because that may lead customers to look for other alternatives.

Future Value

Future value focuses on the research and innovation that goes into the product. For instance, there are going to be times where you will need to research different technical solutions to a particular product. If your current set of technologies are not working optimally, you will want to think about prospective solutions that can help in fixing the problem.

Similarly, it could also be that you want to improve the current standard of practices within the company and make processes more efficient. Obviously, this means that you will have to spend a greater amount of time first learning about the changes that you want to make, and then come up with appropriate solutions that are designed to improve the performance of the product in the future.

Future value is all about making sure that your product remains viable in the future as well. As the landscape continues to evolve and there are dramatic changes taking place in the world of business, companies need to stay at the forefront so that they are able to adapt to the changes and make sure that they remain up to date with the latest technical and production enhancements.