Antimicrobial Products: What It Means To Be Antimicrobial
With the global advancement in the quality of life, consumers have gradually begun to require more from the everyday products they use. This desire, in turn, prompts producers and manufacturers to innovate, expanding in their R&D to create products that can offer more than just the intended benefits, to find ways to have an edge up against the competition.
“The greatest way to show care towards your consumers is to plan for their health and future.”
While thoughtful marketing can be an edge sufficient for a good portion of consumers, it is difficult to beat the benefits from having truly unique, quality products and the reputation attached to them. Commonly, the conception of “quality” lies in the quality of materials used to create the product. Though this can certainly be one way to go about it, tying the “quality” of a product to a “price” excludes a great majority of the market. Rather than this association, it is worth considering other ways to create a product that can connect with all consumers, regardless of niche.
Universal concepts that connect all consumers are “health” and “future.” While modern products have already started answering the latter question with “sustainability,” the former is still largely reliant on the individual products themselves - that is, “health” tends to be targetted as the sole purpose of the product itself. This opportunity paved the road to the development of antimicrobial products.
“But, what are Antimicrobial Products?”
More common to most consumers would be the terms “antibacterial” or “antiviral;” it is in this way that everyone actually “knows” about “antimicrobial” without understanding it. The term “antimicrobial” is defined to describe substances or agents that destroy or inhibit the growth of microorganisms - and typically implies, specifically, destroying or inhibiting pathogenic microorganisms. So “antimicrobial” can be understood as the umbrella term that includes both antibacterial and antiviral as they correspond to bacteria and viruses respectively.
However, to be precise, it is better to understand “antimicrobial” as more encompassing than either antibacterial or antiviral, as an antimicrobial should be able to inhibit more than just one or the other. A quality antimicrobial protects against a larger range of microorganisms than just bacteria or viruses and should extend to fungal and other environmental factors as well.
Therefore, it is natural for antibacterial products to be defined as products that carry antimicrobial properties, protecting it from microbial growth, such as bacterial, viral, and fungal. Often this can mean the product directly contains an active ingredient that is antimicrobial, which can be more time-intensive, or the product can be treated or created combined with some other anticrobial technology. In either case, the antimicrobial property become a secondary desirable feature of the resulting product that sets it apart from competition.
“But, why are Antimicrobial Products desirable?”
At the beginning of this article, we had referenced the improvement in quality of life and how it affects how consumers are now asking and requiring more from the products they use than ever before. This demand gives rise to the opportunity to forge a new, stronger connection with consumers: health.
Just like how it’s said that prevention is the best cure, the introduction of antimicrobial technology can be the final link to this connection as a true preventative. Compared to the common disinfection, which tends to have limited efficacy to only when the surface is being treated, products integrated with antimicrobial technology have sustained residual effectiveness in minimizing the presence of microbes between cleaning. Antimicrobial products, therefore, offer a variety of benefits appealing to consumers:
- Protected against bacteria, virus, and mold growth
- Stay cleaner and fresher for longer and in-between cleaning
- Easier to keep clean
- Have an extended usable lifetime
- Resistant to stains and odors caused by bacteria
- Help to reduce the risk of microbial cross-contamination
Contact an airDefender representative to learn more about how Quantum Antimicrobial Technology can be introduced into your products.