Products Don't Exist

The case of Master Lock points to – at least outside of design circles – an underappreciated truth, that purely physical products do not exist. Levitt draws attention to similar points in his description of the tiers of products by asserting that commodities do not exist, but the example that Lojacono and Zaccai give makes this stronger claim all the more obvious. Locks are not a highly complex item, and have existed for thousands of years. Locks have become highly commoditized, especially since many of Master Lock’s patents have lapsed. Yet, even within this marketplace of companies vying to reduce costs, success was found by understanding that a lock is not sold based on its physical feature set alone, perhaps not even in large part. Through the design process, Master Lock realized that their “product” was really a state of mind that they were offering their customers. This is of course not true just for Master Lock; most companies sell fantasies. The more concrete claim that I am advancing is that no company sells something that is purely a product. Even a generic product has a set of complex mental states associated with it in the mind of the consumer, whether they be ones of economy, discontent, indifference, or something else entirely. In our culture of consumption, every item is implicitly part of the identity of its owner. When a company moves to sell a product, it can either choose to use this reality to its advantage or not. In cases of best practices, the organizations in question turn to design to fully understand and map all of the stakeholders involved in their product chain. By doing this, Master Lock, for example, was able to realize that no amount of re-engineering or cost-cutting would admit them to take an active role in the emotional lives of their customers. Master Lock needed to understand its products as emotional offerings before its customers would respond with their wallets. As design becomes a larger part of the global marketplace, the emotions of consumers will increasingly become a space of dialogue, and less one of insular and subconscious reflection. Personally, the power of this possibility makes me uncomfortable in no small measure, not because I am averse to my emotional needs being better accommodated by the manufacturers of the world, but because I have a very small measure of confidence that this information, which could render such large profits, will be used ethically.

Competitive Analysis: Understand Your Opponents

The suggestion of the need to understand and compensate for the choices of competitors raises a curious question: Are competitors one of a business’s stakeholders? I do not mean by this to suggest that competitors have partial ownership of one’s business, but instead that in any design work the business does, would they benefit from considering their competition as one of the key stakeholders to design around? I think this proposal, put in more business-familiar terms, would not be one that would meet with much resistance. The suggestion that a business be aware of and accommodate the capabilities and needs of its competition is a sensible one strategically. What is important here is to realize that knowing the raw numbers of a competitor’s costs or revenue is not sufficient; it is crucial that the internal motivations and psychologies of the competition be learned. By gathering this information, a great deal more confidence may be had that the next move of the competition may be correctly anticipated, and proactively addressed. In much the same way, design may serve as a shield against the risk of functional and emotional substitutes. By understanding just why a product counts as a substitute in the hearts and minds of consumers, a company may be empowered to defend itself against obsolescence or replacement. Design is necessary toward this end. In order to properly understand just why a car was a good substitute for a horse, Ford had to understand that the desire of the consumer was rapid and easy transit, not a growth hormone for horses. We are able to understand through this discussion that it is nearly necessary, but not sufficient, to use design in order to construct excellent products that take into account the internal and external lives of consumers. It is at least as important, for a business to remain viable, that design be aimed at resolving the risks of direct competitors as well as that of substitutes. By understanding the inner workings of rival companies, plans and counterplans may be made based on an understanding of a competitors’ motivations and available resources, much as could be made internally via a comprehensive application of design. Risks of substitution can also be averted by proper employment of the design process. By knowing consumers, the chance of a functional-emotional substitute taking one’s business blind may be dramatically reduced. In these ways, design may be seen as essential to the competitive strategy of a business.

Marketing Success Through the Differentiation of Anything

There seems to be at least on one reading of generic and expected products where these two sets contain exactly the same members. Levitt defines generic products as, “what’s needed for a chance to play the game of market participation.” He then goes on to define expected products as, “the customer’s minimal purchase conditions.” On the face of it, what’s needed for a chance to participate in a market, would imply access to the thing which would be the object of purchasing. Steel then, is not all that’s needed to participate in the Detroit market, because if there is no delivery of that steel, there is no opportunity for a sale. In at least one sense, what’s needed to participate in the market just is the customer’s minimal purchase conditions. Without some sales, there can be no market participation. Having something exist in a warehouse is not participating in a market, or else I could consider my kitchen a restaurant. Even if I desired my kitchen to be a restaurant, it would not become one until I had the proper functional and legal accommodations made. In much the same way, a company is not participating in the steel market just by owning steel, they need to be able to generate sales on their products. I am somewhat playing devil’s advocate here. I do think that in Levitt’s more complete descriptions, he does a better job at differentiating these two categories of generic versus expected product, but his definitions could have used some work.

Works Cited: Levitt, Theodore. Marketing success through differentiation-of anything. Graduate School of Business Administration, Harvard University, 1980. Lojacono, Gabriella, and Gianfranco Zaccai. "The evolution of the design-inspired enterprise." MIT Sloan management review 45, no. 3 (2004): 75. Essentials, Harvard Business. "Marketer’s tool kit: The 10 strategies you need to succeed." (2006).