Product Behavior

Characterizing what goes into a purchase decision is, I’m guessing, the most important thing a company can do. Why does anyone buy anything? There are lots of ways to talk about it, but the one I’m enjoying these days, I call the “Love It / Solve It” chart.

The idea is this: In order for me to buy a product, it must both solve my problem, to some extent, and I must love it, to some extent. Exactly how much a product must solve and how much I must love before I’ll by are related to each other along some curve. If a product is above and to-the-right of the curve, as the star is, I’ll by. Below the curve, and no dice.

I’ve written previously about using the idea of “hiring a product” as a way to think more broadly about the relationship between consumer and product. Here’s an example.

Another simple tool to help calibrate a project team, or elicit interesting information from a consumer: personification.

It couldn’t be more simple. Just ask something like: if this product were a famous actor, who would it be? Pick a product and ask a few people – I guarantee you’ll get interesting responses.

Sometimes, a feature that may never be used is given the “Primary Feature” treatment. Doing this changes the consumer’s perception of the product, on the shelf or in use.

Here’s a tool that we use often both to analyze and plan consumer experience. I’ll talk about it here as a piece of a product design process, but we use it for service design, retail design, even to plan a business model.