As a product manager, the most frequently asked question at work is “why”.
- Why should the product be positioned like this?
- Why can only meet this demand but not that demand?
- Why does this feature do this?
- Why does this piece of design have to do this?
- Why is it necessary to cut this demand instead of that when the manpower and material resources are insufficient?
- Why do we have to consider the needs of operations in this area?
- Why not complete one function all at once?
…
why? why? why? Why… the head is exploding. Fortunately, I survived, my head didn’t explode. But in response to the why everyone asked, I gradually developed to ask myself “why”, from being abused to self-abusing. Moreover, in the process of constantly asking yourself, it has become a habit to ask yourself “why”: I want to ask why in everything? It is also helpless to find pleasure through self-abuse.
Recently, in the product area, I have been considering the following questions:
- Why is it not easy for tool products to focus on users and make users addicted, while social products are the opposite?
- Why can simple game products make people addicted, while large-scale teamwork games can make users addicted?
- Why are extreme sports so dangerous or so many people flock to it?
- Why do competitive sports (whether it is basketball or table tennis swimming) so fascinating viewers?
- Why do iPhones allow many people to save money for several months to buy, while mobile phones such as Meizu, Xiaomi, and Huawei, which have a good experience, have difficulty gaining user loyalty even if they sell for 799?
- Why is the same stool sold for dozens of dollars in a furniture store, but hundreds or even thousands in a MUJI store?
- Why can a bowl of rice in a street shop only sell for two yuan, while a five-star hotel can buy it for a dozen yuan?
- Why are some brands twice as expensive as other brands for the same mineral water?
…
In short, I want to understand: What is the core secret of a top product becoming a top product? Is there something more essential that determines a top-notch product to become a top-notch? Is a top-notch product a top-notch product because it provides something more essential? From another perspective, I want to know: Is there a most essential thing to judge whether a product is likely to become a top product? In other words, a product can only become a top-notch product as long as it continues to work hard in this area.
After pondering for a period of time, I feel that I have found an answer that I can convince myself.
The positive emotions the product brings to users. The more complex, diverse, and intense the positive emotions a product can bring to users, the easier it is for the product to become a top-notch product.
Why do you say that? The following are some of my thoughts.
To answer the above questions, we must first clarify what a product is.
A product refers to anything that can be provided to the market, used and consumed by people, and can satisfy a certain demand of people; it includes tangible items, intangible services, organizations, concepts, or their combination.
Products can generally be divided into three levels, namely core products, formal products, and extended products.
- The core product is the direct benefit and utility provided to the buyer by the overall product;
- Formal product refers to the physical appearance of the product on the market, including the product’s quality, characteristics, shape, trademark and packaging, etc.;
- Extended products refer to a series of additional benefits provided to customers by the overall product, including transportation, installation, maintenance, guarantees and other benefits to consumers in the consumer field.
From the definition, we can see that the core of the product is to meet people’s needs. The product meets the needs of users through the perception of the form product, thereby obtaining direct benefits and utility as well as the entire process of additional benefits. So, are the top products those products that perfectly meet the needs of users? In a sense, it can be said. However, it is also the mineral water that perfectly meets people’s drinking needs. Nongfu Spring and Ice Dew are obviously different, and the Kobe Natural Mineral Water Fillico, which sells for $100 a bottle, is even more different. How to explain this problem?
The first thing I think of is the hierarchy of needs theory, which is the Maslow’s theory of needs that is often mentioned when people talk about demand satisfaction. Let’s first briefly understand Maslow’s demand theory.
Maslow’s theory divides needs into five categories: Physiological needs, Safety needs, Love and belonging, Esteem, and Self-actualization, followed by lower Arrange from level to higher level.
The first level: physiological needs: breathing, water, food, sleep, physiological balance, secretion, sex
If any of these needs (except sex) are not met, the physiology of human beings will not function properly. In other words, human life will be threatened. In this sense, physiological needs are the most important driving force for people to act. Maslow believes that only after these most basic needs are met to the extent necessary for survival, other needs can become new motivating factors, and by this time, these relatively satisfied needs will no longer become motivating factors. .
The second level: safety needs: personal safety, health protection, resource ownership, property ownership, moral protection, job security, family safety
Maslow believes that the entire organism is a mechanism for the pursuit of safety. Human receptors, effectors, intelligence and other energies are mainly tools for seeking safety. Science and outlook on life can even be regarded as part of meeting safety needs. Of course, once this need is relatively satisfied, it no longer becomes an motivating factor.
The third level: the need for emotion and belonging: friendship, love, sexual intimacy
Everyone wants to get mutual relationship and care. Emotional needs are more detailed than physical needs. It is related to a person’s physical characteristics, experience, education, and religious beliefs.
The fourth level: the need for respect: self-respect, confidence, achievement, respect for others, and respect for others
Everyone hopes that they have a stable social status, and requires personal abilities and achievements to be recognized by the society. The need for respect can be divided into internal respect and external respect. Internal respect refers to a person’s desire to be strong, competent, confident, and independent in various situations. In short, internal respect is human self-esteem. External respect means that a person wants to have status, prestige, and be respected, trusted and highly appraised by others. Maslow believes that respect needs to be met, which enables people to be full of confidence in themselves, full of enthusiasm for society, and experience the value of their lives.
The fifth level: the need for self-realization: morality, creativity, self-consciousness, problem-solving ability, fairness, ability to accept reality, self-transcendence
The need for self-realization is the highest level of need. It refers to a person who realizes personal ideals and ambitions, exerts his abilities to the greatest extent, and achieves the realm of self-realization. Accept yourself and accept others, increase your problem-solving ability, improve your self-consciousness, be good at working independently, and require you to be alone without being disturbed, and complete all things commensurate with your abilities. In other words, people must do a competent job, so that they can feel the greatest happiness. Maslow proposed that the approach taken to satisfy the need for self-realization differs from person to person. The need for self-realization is to work hard to realize one’s potential and make one more and more the person one wants.
It can be seen that in Maslow’s theory of needs, except for the first level of accidents, most of them are psychological and spiritual needs. It makes people feel safe, respected, self-fulfilled, etc.
Through the understanding of Maslow’s demand theory, my inference is: the reason why Nongfu Spring is different from ice dew, and the reason why Fillico is even more different is that: although these three are very good for people’s water intake Needs (physiological needs), the gap is actually not big on this point. However, Nongfu Spring’s brand is better than Ice Dew, and has a certain degree of satisfaction in terms of safety requirements. On this basis, Fillico also meets more advanced needs, such as reflecting self-worth, being respected, self-confident, and identity identification. , Fillico is not just a bottle of water, but a status symbol that meets the higher level of psychological and spiritual needs of users.
At this point, it seems that everything can be explained. The more levels and levels a product can meet the needs of users, the easier it is to become an excellent or top-notch product. But as I said before, I hope to go deeper and find a single or simple dimension to judge the product. The demand is obviously a very complex thing. How many kinds of needs do humans have? Don’t know. And many needs are implicit. As an ordinary user or product manager, unless something meets the demand, it may even be difficult to find that he has a need for something. Therefore, although demand may seem to explain a lot of things, in fact it is not so easy for people to perceive, except for physiological needs.
Therefore, I decided to conduct some analysis from the process in which the product meets the needs of users.
A product, whether it is tangible or intangible, must be perceived by users in order to meet the needs of users in the end. So, what happened in the process of this product being perceived? Through what, do users feel satisfied? To answer these two questions, you need to first popularize some psychological knowledge and see how a thing is perceived in psychology.
Psychologically speaking, the general process of perceiving an object or thing is to first feel and perceive an object, and then form an attitude toward the object (attitude includes knowledge, experience judgment, emotional response, and behavioral orientation). Here are some more detailed concepts:
Feeling: Feeling is the foundation of all other psychological phenomena. Without feeling, there will be no other psychological phenomena. People’s cognition of objective things starts from feeling, which is the simplest form of cognition. Feelings are divided into two categories. The first category is the external sensation, which has five kinds of vision, hearing, smell, taste and skin. The second type of sensation reflects the movement of various parts of the body itself or changes in internal organs. The sensory organs of this type of sensation are located in the depths of the relevant tissues (such as muscles) or the surface of internal organs (such as the stomach wall, respiratory tract), and there is a sense of movement. , Balance and body sense. Human beings recognize various attributes of things through various senses of objective things. For example, when pineapple acts on our sensory organs, we can reflect its color through vision; through taste, it can reflect its sweet and sour taste; through smell, it can reflect its delicate fragrance, and at the same time, it can reflect its rough convexity through touch. Up. Sensation not only reflects the individual attributes of objective things, but also reflects the movement and state of various parts of our body. For example, we can feel the lifting of our hands, the tilt of the body, and the violent contraction of the stomach and intestines. Although feeling is a very simple psychological process, it has important meaning in our life practice.
Perception: Perception is a series of processing processes of sensory information that organizes and interprets the production of external objects and events. The cognition of individual attributes of objective things is sensation, and the combination of various sensations of the same thing forms the overall cognition of this object, that is, the perception of this object. Perception is the reflection in the human brain of objective objects that directly act on the sensory organs. Perception is a combination of various sensations. It comes from the sensation, but it is different from the sensation. Sensation only reflects the individual attributes of things, but perception knows the whole of things; perception is the result of the activities of a single sensory organ, but perception is the result of coordinated activities of various senses; perception does not depend on personal knowledge and experience, but perception is affected. The influence of personal knowledge and experience. The same object, different people feel similar to it, but the perception of it will be different. The more knowledge and experience, the more perfect and comprehensive the perception of the object. The blood sample under the microscope, as long as it is not color-blind, looks red by anyone; but the doctor can still see the red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets inside, which people without medical knowledge can’t.
Attitude: Attitude is an individual’s stable psychological tendency towards a specific object (person, idea, emotion or event, etc.). This psychological tendency contains the subjective evaluation of the individual and the resulting behavioral tendency. Miles (1993) pointed out that the institution of attitude involves three dimensions: emotion, behavioral intention, and cognition. That is, the ABC organization of attitude.
- Cognitive element: Cognitive element refers to the narrative that an individual has an evaluative meaning to an attitude object. The content of the narration includes personal knowledge, understanding, belief, doubt, and approval or disapproval of the attitude object.
- Emotional component: According to the “Dictionary of Psychology”, “Emotion is the attitude and experience of people on whether objective things meet their own needs.” At the same time, general general psychology courses also believe that: “Emotions and emotions are people’s attitude experience towards objective things, but emotions are more inclined to the attitude experience of the individual’s basic needs and desires, while emotions are more inclined to the social needs and desires. Attitude experience”.
- Behavioral intention component: The intentional factor refers to the individual’s tendency to react to the attitude object or the state of preparation for behavior, that is, how the individual is prepared to react to the attitude object.
Therefore, in the process of the product being used for perception, the product is first felt, then perceived, and then through the judgment of cognition and experience, emotions or emotions are generated, and finally behavioral intentions are formed. To put it simply, a bottle of water is placed in front of us, and we know its color, temperature, feel, taste, color of the wrapping paper and other sensations through our senses, and then we know whether it is Nongfu Spring or ice dew through our perception, and then through us To evaluate the bottle of water based on the knowledge and experience of the person, and generate emotions (whether it is happy, happy or disgusting, hate), and finally decide whether to buy it through behavioral intentions.
So, in this whole process, which link is most easily noticed by users and most easily observed by product managers? In fact, it is emotions and emotions, and it is very difficult for this normal person to hide. Feeling and perception can almost be processed automatically by the human body, and we can hardly observe this process. The behavioral intention is originally a very good dimension, but the behavioral intention will be affected by a lot of reality, especially for many high-end products. Therefore, emotions and emotions are actually the best dimension. Regardless of whether it can be afforded or used in a rational analysis, if a product is a good product, it will definitely inspire positive emotions from users. In other words, in the entire process of meeting user needs, the emotions that users are stimulated can be used as a fundamental dimension to judge whether a product is good or bad. To put it simply, the more positive emotions aroused by the use of the product, the better the product.
From the perspective of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, the types and complexity of emotions that meet different needs are different. how to say? If it’s a simple meal, it may be a sense of pleasure when you are full, but eating in a five-star hotel may give you a sense of pleasure, perhaps also a sense of pride, and a sense of being respected. Obviously, pleasure is a relatively elementary emotion. Being respected is a more advanced emotion. On the basis of meeting the needs of users, products that can bring positive emotional stimulation are good products. The more complex, diverse, and enthusiastic emotions are, the better the product is for users. Even if the demand can be met, if the emotional stimulus is negative, it will not make users feel that it is a good product. For example, the restaurant’s food is good, but the service attitude is particularly bad, and everyone still feels that the product is not a good product. The product is not the thing you sell, it also includes a series of services before and after.
Therefore, as far as product development is concerned, it is necessary to allow products to stimulate users’ positive emotions as much as possible. The more types, the more complex, and the more enthusiastic the better. For example, your product is mineral water. If it’s just the most common mineral water, it can only make everyone feel happy when they are thirsty; if you define a concept at this time, your mineral water is water for urban white-collar workers, then after the user drinks the water, Not only do I feel happy, but I also feel that I am a white-collar worker (relatively high-end); if you define this kind of water as an urban white-collar worker who understands the taste of life, then after the user drinks this bottle of water, Not only do I feel that my social status is an urban white-collar worker, but I also feel that I am a person who understands the taste of life, and the emotions generated by these two kinds of emotions are more complicated, so that we don’t know how to name this emotion. But undoubtedly, this sentiment is positive. Of course, if you can sell this product at a relatively low price, it will inevitably be better than just selling a product of ordinary mineral water.
Therefore, the core secret of an excellent product is that the product can bring diverse, complex, and strong positive emotions to users.
Finally, think about the questions I asked for a series of products. Do you have answers? Similarly, think about the product you make, to what extent can it inspire positive emotions in users?
