Making a product can't just talk about the product itself

We receive thousands of product requests every year, and thousands of customers talk to us about products. We find that many companies prefer to talk about the product itself, the function of the product, the expected design stunning effect of the product, the technology of the product, and the effect of the product realization, but companies with high success rate prefer to talk about the market positioning of the product, purchase scenarios, sales channel characteristics, why this product is made, competitive advantages and detailed user portraits.

In fact, when we make products, we can't just talk about the elements of the product itself. The product itself is the result. We need to talk more about the cause.

R&D, usually the industry refers to R&D, that is, R (Research) mainly refers to technical development, focusing on technical principles and technical paths; D (Development) refers to product development, and pays more attention to the industrialization of technological achievements, the results of output and market financial success. The product we are talking about here refers to D (Development).

Market Positioning Perspective

What is the target market for your product? The most important mission of a product in an enterprise is a financial success because the enterprise benefits from the exchange of value with the market through the carrier of the product. Market positioning is to allow the product development team to understand that your battlefield is your exchange object, and to understand your exchange value to create the best carrier. How does this relate to making a product? Very important! If you deploy users in first-tier cities, there are key differences from other cities in terms of aesthetic orientation. If your battlefield is in a supermarket, shelf aesthetics are very important, and your products must have visual characteristics that stand out among the rich products on the shelf.

Once you choose a battlefield that can give full play to your own advantages, the product development team can choose from nine to create the best product advantages, and stunning itself is the best expression of clear value. For example, a product in a macaron color has a clear market positioning for white-collar women. Macarons give up on men's aesthetics but also focus on white-collar women's aesthetics, thus creating a unique attraction.

User needs perspective

What are the real pain points of your target users? For example, many makers think that users always forget to drink water, so they use smart cups to set the water consumption and reminder functions to solve the problem with technology. However, the real pain point for users may not be drinking reminders, but how to make them like drinking water. 

It is very important to dig out the real pain points. One of LKKERSCM successful cases, the Honeywell air purifier , which we launched in 2015 when the smog and air pollution problem is outstanding, the product solved the most concerning pain points for home users. We made user insights and found that users are most concerned about the simple replacement of the filter element and the problem of misoperation, and air quality. On the question of how to see the purification effect, we have reshaped the experience of home air purifiers based on these pain points. This user insight has also won the Design Research Awards . 

If the pain points you solve are not universal, you must carefully analyze the real pain points of users through specific methods of user insight and work to ensure that the development team can accurately understand the needs of users.

Competitive perspective

Who are your competitors? Some partners think that they have no competitors, some partners think that competitors' products should not be considered, and some partners cannot accurately define competitors, so what are competitors of products? From the perspective of users, products that are in the user options in the purchase scenario are your competitors. For example, if a user has newly renovated a house and prepares furniture if you are a sofa seller, you will face competition in the same category and budget competition. Competition in the same category means that your competitors also sell sofas, so what are the reasons for users to buy you? Budget competition means that the total budget of users is limited, so why are users willing to spend more money on sofas instead of other categories such as coffee tables and cabinets? This is competition.

What does the competition do to a product? Differentiation allows you to do more with less. Based on the self-developed air multiplier technology, Dyson launched the product "Bladeless Fan". The functional utility of the bladeless fan to the user is actually stronger wind. Who are Dyson's competitors? It is a traditional fan. To win the user group of high-end fans,  Dyson created the category of "leafless fans", which redefines the "leafless" shape on the user's mind, and the ring hollow strengthens the bladeless visual hammer feature, bringing consumers a distinct memory point to let the product stand out from the other fans.

The last one is the perspective of product strategy thinking is category. Because categories drive users' purchases, when users have pain points, the mental category that is fed back by the brain is the most primitive motivation for purchasing. It's a battle of the minds of business.

Category perspective

What kind of mind do you occupy? Category differentiation is the driving force behind business development. In the user's mind, different categories are used to solve the needs of different scenarios in the user's life. Demand differentiation brings product differentiation to develop a rich category market . What does the category perspective have to do with product development? Very important. When you create a product, you need to consider the category memory in the user's mind. The product needs to help the enterprise quickly seize the category mind through visual hammer and experience innovation.

Hair dryer is a mature category with a large market size, high concentration, slowing down, or even stable growth. This means that the user penetration rate is high, the concentration of top brands is high, and it is difficult to stand out of the competition. We helped users create a vertical hair dryer, mainly for the scene of freeing hands at home. Users can brush their mobile phones while blowing their hair, and children can watch picture books while blowing them. Category name, visual hammer, and new brand are the three key elements for launching a new category.

The key opportunity for categories in the mature stage is to focus on creating new categories. Hair dryers have driven the overall sales increase due to category innovations such as high-speed hair dryers, negative ion hair dryers, and vertical hair dryers.

Product development is an investment activity. For the best input-output ratio, we need to think about the goal of product development from the market, so as to achieve the most important financial mission of the product. Therefore, making a product cannot just talk about the product itself. Do you agree?

About LKKER SCM

LKKER SCM Co., Ltd is a member company of LKKdesign Group, 100% owned by LKKdesign Group which is founded in 2004. LKKER SCM is a one-stop product development and customized supply chain solution provider. We offer services from design to manufacturing covering industrial design ,  mechanical design ,  electronics engineering ,  rapid prototype ,  tooling ,  pilot production , and  mass production . LKKER SCM has been recognized as Indiegogo Recommended Prototyping & Manufacturing Expert since 2019.

LKKdesign Group is a regular product design award winner worldwide. Being the largest and top-tier design house in China, LKK has won 521 design awards since company establishment. LKKdesign is recognized as the National Industrial Design Center by The Ministry of Technology since 2013. Key investors of LKKdesign include Fortune Capital, China Culture Industrial Investment Fund, and Green Pine Capital Partners.

LKKER SCM partners with you to develop your product and get it to market quickly, efficiently, and economically. We have the design expertise, engineering knowledge, and manufacturing know-how to tailor solutions that work for you and your product in these sectors: