Convenience foods like instant noodles or frozen pizza have become integral
parts of today’s society. More than three-quarters of the calories of US grocery
purchases stem from highly or moderately processed foods and beverages (Poti,
Mendez, Ng, & Popkin, 2015). Due to their prevalence, convenience foods have
been drawing academic interest for the last century. Google Scholar shows more
than 19,000 hits for articles published between 1920 and 2014 containing the
word combination “convenience foods” (Scholliers, 2015). In contrast, despite
their growing economic relevance, little academic attention was paid to nonfood
convenience products. Such products can be either fast-moving consumer
goods like all-purpose cleaning wipes and laundry detergent capsules, or durables
like kitchen appliances and robotic vacuum cleaners. Non-food convenience
goods have been gaining in importance for consumers and companies
over the last years. For instance, the US market for unit-dose laundry detergents
(capsules) was worth more than $796 million in 2012 (Branna, 2015) and
the sales of all-purpose cleaners increased by 22 %, reaching $1.1 billion in
2014 (Johnson, 2014). Still, research that conceptualizes or operationalizes the
construct convenience orientation (CO) is limited to (mostly quantitative) studies
of convenience food products. Since those results are not generalizable, the
exclusive focus on food is insufficient and the construct convenience orientation
demands an explorative analysis in different product categories.