Insight When developing a product, the first thing we need to do is consumer insight. Every entrepreneur has a different way of insight and understanding; some discover behaviors, some discover needs, some discover pain points, and some discover patterns. But we see that hundreds of thousands of products are launched in the consumer goods industry every year, yet very few can withstand the test of the market. Is it because competition is too fierce and involution is severe? Or is the product logic wrong? I think there are many reasons, but no matter what the reason, inaccurate insight may be the main cause of a product's failure. What to gain insight into? Essentially, it is to see through consumers' consumption motives and logic, and design the entire process of product and marketing based on user behavior, ultimately meeting consumer needs. What behaviors will users exhibit after a need arises? In summary, it can be divided into several steps: observation, collection, comparison, judgment, and decision. Therefore, to gain insight, we need to base it on needs and think through the product and marketing logic for these steps before launch. Why must we think it through before product launch? It's simple: there are countless products on the market that can meet consumer needs. If any step in this process goes wrong, the product has almost no chance of winning. So we must put enough effort into insight, find needs and pain points that others haven't found, help customers solve problems others haven't solved, and design irresistible transaction reasons to persuade and influence consumers. Only then can products be accepted and recognized by consumers. However, many people confuse insight with observation. Observation: A record of consumer behavior. It records consumers through external physical attributes and behaviors, such as age, occupation, region, income, identity, hobbies, etc. Insight: Through consumer behavior, analyze the psychological needs behind the behavior. Based on a user's certain behavior, see the logic, motivation, needs, pain points, and further actions behind it. In summary, the most important difference between insight and observation is: observation only records what people do, while insight answers why people do it. Observation only sees facts; insight discovers patterns. Only by truly achieving insight can we fundamentally understand consumer motives. Ye Maozhong said that the consumer's inner world is like an iceberg; what you can easily observe is only the tip above the water; the real motives are hidden below, requiring deep insight to discover the whole iceberg. According to the iceberg theory, the vast majority of human potential consciousness influences surface consciousness and behavior, and users' potential needs are the true purchase motives. As people often say, I don't want to buy a drill, but the "hole"; I don't want to buy a car, but speed, status, ambition, power, desire... I don't want to buy cosmetics, but "beauty", confidence, attention, or even love. Therefore, good insight gives us a clear result: what consumers need, why they need it, and how we can meet their needs. A good insight not only solves the problem of why users buy, but also how they buy. Only by mastering the patterns and following the trend can products naturally sell through and be repurchased. So, what is a good insight? I think a good insight must include at least six points: Scenario, Category, Brand, Product, Channel, and Communication. Everything unfolds around the scenario Many people, when mentioning scenario, first think of user experience. From a marketing perspective, we can view scenario as a collection of elements in a specific time and space where users have problems to solve. This collection includes the user's needs, pain points, capabilities, awareness, and relationships. For example, I want to treat a client to dinner tonight; that's my need. But I don't know what to eat; that's a pain point. My budget is limited today; that's capability. I roughly know what is appropriate to eat; that's awareness. With whom I eat and what kind of occasion it is; that's relationships. Based on the scenario of this meal, it determines how much money and what brand of alcohol I will drink tonight, and how to drink it and how much is appropriate. This is just one meal. When I'm running, cooking, working, etc., as long as I am in a time-space and have some intersection with the physical world, it can be called a scenario. It can be said that our day is composed of countless scenarios. Scenarios are everywhere and ever-changing. People in a scenario may not start from needs, but they always end with solving a certain problem. Note! Only needs within a scenario are true needs; needs without a scenario are false needs and cannot constitute a reason for regular consumption. Consumers may have many problems to solve in a scenario. We cannot solve all needs, so we must list the user's needs like a to-do list: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Among these, which is the most important, which is a false need, which needs to be solved first, and which must be solved? Scenario determines category For the same meal, if I eat with friends, it might be a case of beer; with clients, it becomes Moutai; with a girlfriend, it becomes red wine; alone, it becomes a soft drink. In different scenarios, consumption logic may be completely different. We can understand that scenario determines category. But in one scenario, there can be many alternative categories. For example, when eating alone, I can drink cola, juice, tea, Wanglaoji, or coconut juice. You see, for a brand, market competition is not just within a category, but based on scenario, whoever has a more effective solution wins. There was an American pharmacist named Pemberton who produced a secret formula medicine called French Coca Wine, made from coca leaves, cola nuts, and wine, claiming to cure neurasthenia and impotence. Although it sold well in Atlanta upon launch, it was a medicine, not a beverage. Later, as the United States began prohibiting alcohol and drugs, Pemberton had to change the formula, removing the wine and coca leaves, and it became today's Coca-Cola. Undoubtedly, from medicine to beverage, different scenarios, different categories, and vastly different market capacities. How you define your category determines your market space and capacity. As Coca-Cola's then-CEO Roberto Goizueta said: All liquids that enter the mouth are our competitors. That's why Coca-Cola became the world's largest beverage brand. Why do some new consumer brands that claim to be healthy snacks fail to sell without promotions and die as soon as promotions stop, even when demand is clear? For example, last year on Tmall and Douyin, there was a popular health snack: black sesame pills, targeting young consumers, claiming to promote hair growth and health. I saw players invest heavily in Douyin to educate the category. Later, People's Daily published an article: "Don't pay IQ tax for black sesame pills," which instantly silenced the hot category. But what I see is that thanks to People's Daily's article, the entrepreneurial players inside would have lost even more. The important reason is that it only makes consumers think it's healthy, but black sesame pills don't have real efficacy; they are not medicine. The logic for consumers to buy is fear, not really solving hair problems. So, the biggest problem with the healthy snack category is that the demand truly exists, but the product cannot solve the real problem. This leads to consumers eating it when they remember and not eating when they forget, with no strong need for continuous purchase. So how should such a product define its category? If we define black sesame pills as a good gift for health, the consumption reason changes from "I think I need it" to "I think you need it," and the logic changes from active consumption to passive consumption. Only then will consumers have a relatively stable purchase reason. You see, How many consumers buy Six Walnut for brain health themselves? How many consumers buy Brain Platinum for themselves? From function to emotion. Different consumption needs lead to different category spaces and market capacities. Product is the consumer's solution As mentioned earlier, it is because of scenarios that needs arise, and with needs, consumers search for solutions among many categories. The core of a product is essentially to provide the best solution for consumers. So when making a product, it's not just about good looks, quality, and taste; in a sense, such a product is just one solution among many consumer scenarios. We need to see what solutions competitors have already provided in the scenario, and how many pain points remain unresolved. What aspects of competitors' solutions are consumers dissatisfied with? For example, although Chinese people have been educated about drinking milk for years, lactose intolerance is a unique issue for Asians. Fortunately, Chinese people digest yogurt well, so we see yogurt is the first choice for lactose-intolerant people. But yogurt has a problem: it must be stored at low temperatures. In Chinese culture, people don't like eating cold things, so some middle-aged and elderly people with weak stomachs don't like yogurt. Parents also don't want to give children cold yogurt. Huanggang Milk, after gaining insight into consumers' dissatisfaction with milk and yogurt categories, launched yogurt that can be drunk at room temperature. It sold like hotcakes upon launch. Later, Bright and Yili imitated it, launching Mosilian and Ambrosial. You see, the pain points of lactose intolerance and not liking cold products were solved by companies through room-temperature yogurt. But is that enough? Let's return to the category issue. Room-temperature yogurt is just one of many yogurts, meeting only a portion of people's needs. There are too many category choices; room-temperature yogurt doesn't have such a large market demand. What to do? From function to emotion, use it as a gift! When room-temperature yogurt is defined as a gift, creating passive consumption, this small scenario solution suddenly becomes a market demand of hundreds of billions! There are many other cases of providing the best solution for consumers. I particularly like to use Dayao Jiabin as an example. An important reason is that it indeed provides an irresistible solution for consumers in specific scenarios: at the same price, I make more money than cola and am more affordable than Beibingyang. So what I want to say is that products are meant to solve consumer problems, but there are many kinds of problems. We must not only discern the truth of problems but also distinguish their size and priority, and truly help users solve them. Brand Many people say the role of a brand is to make consumers remember it. I think that's not quite right; remembering is useless. Consumers need to remember what problem your brand can solve for them; that's useful. Look at these slogans: "Afraid of getting heaty? Drink Wanglaoji." "Tired, sleepy? Drink Dongsheng Special Drink." "Use your brain often? Drink more Six Walnut." "This holiday, no gifts; if you give gifts, only Brain Platinum." What are these slogans saying? They are telling consumers: my product is the best solution in this scenario! So the core of a brand is to make consumers remember how the product effectively solves their problems and pain points! The logic of positioning has always talked about segmentation and cutting, then occupying the top-of-mind awareness in a certain field. That's not wrong, but what does "leading brand in XX field" have to do with me? In today's information explosion, why would I bother remembering who is the leading brand? The core element is that a successful brand must be the best solution that users can think of on their to-do list in a specific scenario. And it must be an irresistible solution. Communication and Channel Communication is to tell consumers about this brand's irresistible solution. Channel is to place this solution where consumers can easily get it. In today's market, communication and channel have become integrated. Many people talk about the unity of brand and effect. But what I want to say is that if you rely on cutting prices to get consumer transactions, that's fake unity of brand and effect. The role of communication is to clearly convey the value of the product, not to persuade consumers through discounts, and to make consumers remember it. The value of channel lies in faster and larger-scale reach to users. Today, the fragmentation of communication and channels is irreversible, but different consumption behaviors have different focuses within channels. Planned consumption, immediate consumption (physiological, social), impulsive consumption, and stockpiling consumption have completely different logics, and the ways of cognition and transaction are also very different. Consumers in different scenarios need matching product combinations, packaging combinations, price combinations, and channel combinations. Remember, our products are meant to solve consumer problems. The so-called pure online, pure offline, or online first then offline, these thinking logics are problematic. Many new retail channels gain consumer recognition by shortening the chain and breaking the value chain of traditional big brands. I don't think this approach can build a brand, nor even form a stable value network. Before providing consumers with an irresistible solution, don't rush to do communication. Once you've figured it out, do it quickly. For offline products, you need to accurately distribute store by store according to consumption scenarios and retail channels. The higher the shelf cost, the higher the channel barrier. The higher the barrier, the higher the entry threshold for competitors. Yes, channels really have barriers. New Opportunities The market is dynamic and ever-changing; there is never a one-size-fits-all product or perfect solution. As long as consumer scenarios change, market opportunities always exist. Using these six keywords of insight, a simple analysis reveals that market opportunities are abundant: New Scenarios: Around new consumer groups, Generation Z, new time-space, relationships, needs, and pain points have changed; gain insight based on new scenarios; New Categories: Based on scenarios, propose new solutions, quality, emotions; New Products: R&D, craftsmanship, packaging, taste, new technology, new raw materials, natural, healthy; New Brands: Values, youthfulness, content, IP, stories, new solutions; New Communication: New communication methods, new reach methods, retention logic, wave-making, content, social, and fission; New Channels: Short chain, D2C, direct reach, focus on communication and interaction, integration of cognition and transaction; Summary: Today we talk about insight, essentially four things: empathy, consensus, resonance, and sharing. Scenario empathy: able to empathize with consumers' real needs in the scenario. Value consensus: we can provide an irresistible solution for consumers. Emotional resonance: recognition, liking, even becoming an emotional anchor. Product sharing: anytime, anywhere, easily accessible, shared and co-created, deep connection. These words are easy to say, but very difficult to achieve. I've only talked about the thinking logic of insight, but whether you can truly gain insight into real consumer needs still requires effort to study consumers, empathize with them, and only then is there a chance to find opportunities. | Founder of New Distribution FMCG industry channel expert, author of over 400,000 words of FMCG industry research articles For communication, you can add WeChat by long-pressing. When adding, please indicate your company, position, and name. More Articles -END-