Product Concepts

In this blog i will discuss a convenience product Microsoft has put into commerce recently. A convenience product is a relatively inexpensive that merits little shopping effort. It is usually referred to as candy, soft drinks, aspirin but in the case of Microsoft a company who sells software and hardware its convenience product is introduced differently but is a product of convenience for its customers.

In 2007 Microsoft was touting the advantages it would have in search as a result of its ability to integrate its engine into its own online properties and products.

(Microsoft execs referred to this kind of search as “convenience search.” Going to a search engine and typing in a query there is what they called “destination search.”)

Cut to July 9, 2009. Today, Microsoft announced one of those long-promised “convenience search” capabilities with the ability to directly insert Bing search results into Hotmail messages. Microsoft has moved from pilot stage to final and has integrated a "Quick Add" Feature in Hotmail.

To use Quick Add, users can select a category from a new Quick Add pane on the right when composing new e-mail messages. From there, they can directly insert a Bing search result into their messages.Quick Add is “currently available in select languages and geographies (Australia, Canada, China, India, US, and UK), according to the Hotmail team.