We are all well aware that there are cool products and there are products that sell and we classically talk of cost / feature trade-offs. And when people do pricing studies on a new product concept, they usually make the assumption that desire and willingness to pay are related in some simple way. But I have come to realize that there isn’t always a simple relationship. A new product can win over a share of someone’s mind or a share of their wallet, but in order to trigger a purchase a product needs to win both.The easiest example is to imagine the difference between a Windows PC and a Apple computer - or maybe even more strikingly between a Zune and an iPod or a Windows Smart Phone and an iPhone …
- The Apple brand promise seems to rapidly win over share of mind, with consumers wanting one desperately, but unable to justify spending that much money (this is independent of whether they are reasonably priced for what they offer and more related to the tangible value that the product offers).
- Windows products, by contrast, tend to win share of wallet fairly easily, with people having set aside the budget for a new PC, or a new phone and yet they feel uncomfortable spending the money on a product that they do not feel an emotional bond to (even if they understand the the usefulness).
The underlying questions here are ‘how do we create products that people value and thet they feel glad to spend money on?’.
David Gilmore