Value is what people perceive it to be

The word “value” gets discussed and dissected in business quite a bit, but what does it really mean? At the end of the day, it means whatever the customer wants it to mean.

I once bought a $5 bottle of Coke and was happy to do it. Given the situation, the value was high. I also find some of the services that we pay for to be an incredible value and I’m happy to pay them.

When it comes to other services, there’s a common thought that effort=value, but that’s not usually true. Just because something requires more effort to produce doesn’t mean it’s worth more value to consume.

Henry George said that “the value of something lies in how much labor we’re willing to exchange for it“, not in how much labor was put into creating it. Put another way, the value in a product or service is shown in how many calories we’re willing to give up to have that product or service.

In the long-famous book “The E-Myth Revisited“, author Michael Gerber laid it out very plainly:

“What is value? How do we understand it? I would suggest that value is what people perceive it to be, and nothing more.“

We try to showcase and emphasize the value of the services that we offer, but at the end of the day the real value is only in what others see.