Have you invested a lot of time in order to choose a better digital product, but in the end you find that you can't abandon the old products? Or maybe after you buy an iPhone, you don’t know why you bought MacBook Pro and Apple Watch?
We usually think that we can choose freely, but our past behavior is actually highly related to future behavior. This powerful social impact is called "commitment" and consistency. People always have a tendency to hope to be consistent from beginning to end.
users often have considerable energy and time on a certain product for various reasons. And the time and energy you bet will give value to the product. Whether this value is personal information, time or energy, it will increase the chance that it will be used again in the future.
Author: Shkolyar
For example, research shows that if someone asked us to help him take care of the items, we are more likely to be subjectively guarding and catching the thief who tried to steal him, even if no one asked us to do this level.
The continuous inertia is the powerful driving force behind the action. It is often considered a character trait, the foundation of logic, rationality, stability and honesty. Inconsistent people are often considered to be confused, complex, capricious, or undisciplined.
Everything is difficult to start with - Leonardo da Vinci
allows users to remain loyal until they form habits
Commitment is reconciliation, recognition and investment. It is an essential element in strengthening consistent behavior. Once you show your position and choose this product, you will have a tendency to be natural in identity, and then you will show behavior consistent with your position.
For example, when I bought an Sony TV, I successively bought Sony speakers and Sony PlayStation to unify the brand and adapt to previous consumer decisions. Even though Sony's competitors have better speakers, I chose Sony's. Furthermore, that's why people with iPhones are more likely to have a MacBook Pro or Apple Watch — we want to be consistent in action.
Consumption habits are part of behavioral consistency. If the consumption experience is good, customers will tend to buy other products from the same brand, but this also involves the factors that consumers invest their energy in the brand.
IKEA effect
Consumers give high value to the products they create, which is a cognitive bias. The IKEA Effect was first named and defined by Michael Norton and Daniel Arreary of Harvard Business School in 2011 in their three papers.
They describe the IKEA effect as "independent work is enough to make people like their own labor fruits. If a standardized office is established and a difficult and independent task is completed, it will also lead to people overestimating their creative value."
This Swedish furniture manufacturer has an innovative packaging process that allows companies to reduce labor costs and improve store efficiency. Compared to competitors, IKEA lets people assemble furniture. Later they found that having consumers assemble their own furniture has the potential advantage—things built with their own hands are more valuable than buying things that have been assembled. So businesses can take advantage of this. The work customers put into the product increases the value of the product.
For example, I have many friends who, even if they can afford more luxury brands, will still buy IKEA products because they have some investment in it. They value the process of making things by themselves more than buying things assembled. So at the subconscious level, it is difficult for them to make changes. Here are a few real cases worth referring to.
Instagram This application itself is free, and there is no cost to download, register and use. Payment starts when they ask you to follow someone. The act itself offers nothing, but they know you'll come back and see what those people posted. This creates a paid cycle.Another example of
Instagram is their photo album. Once you save one photo after another in your album, it will be difficult for you to put down this app. The effect of
is also clearly reflected on Pinterest, and is called "collector syndrome". You look for new things and keep them in your collection, which is a reward in itself. That's why other Instagram-like companies have a hard time breaking into this market, although some of these apps do better than Instagram. People have already consumed on an application, so why do you still need your product? No one likes to lose their efforts in vain.
We add our daily routine to an album and put our energy into it. Over time, the product will become more valuable and more difficult to leave.
Spotify
This application is also free. But every time you save a song to a playlist, you are contributing to the brand, like Instagram. This will strengthen your connection with the service. Songs on playlists are a classic example of content increasing the value of services, although Spotify is not the creator of these songs, it is just a porter and storage platform for songs.
As an example. Before switching to iPhone, I used an Android phone, and Spotify was the most attractive app for Android at that time. Two years later I decided to switch to iPhone, but kept Spotify. I tried using Apple Music, but I had a hard time adapting to the new interface and recreating playlists and listening habits. Considering that I have more than 300 songs, it makes it difficult for me to decide whether to deprecate it - think about it, an app affects whether to enable a mobile phone and a platform, and such a decision-making impact mechanism is not uncommon.
Spotify Discover Weekly
Spotify Another good example of adding added value is their "weekly discovery", which you can learn more about. When they first launched the "Weekly Discover" personalized playlist based on your play history, I was determined that I would always use the app. Obviously, this feature's audience reaches thousands of users. The above image explains how it works.
Photoshop
Photoshop is a slightly different case, the process of investment starts with you learning this application. Do you remember how difficult it is to learn all the details of it? People take relevant courses, watch a lot of video tutorials on Youtube, practice and seek advice on using it. So we put a lot of time and energy into it. Once we master it, we feel like we have conquered a mountain.
However, even if there are better software on the market, you won't easily deprecate Photoshop. Because it means releasing everything, which will waste all the time you’ve spent on Photoshop before. The more time you spend on a software, the harder it will be to discard it.
eBay
There is a different form of investment here, that is reputation. On an e-commerce platform like eBay, reputation is crucial for people to buy things from you. Sometimes this is an important difference between you and your competitors. Therefore, merchants invest a lot in their reputation and provide the best customer service possible. They have won badges for this, symbolizing that they are a trusted seller with good ratings and customer reviews. (Like the praises, crowns and diamonds on Taobao)
reputation makes users more likely to stick to the service. Once people put their energy into creating and maintaining their status, or a high-quality rating, it is difficult for them to leave the platform. They give it too much meaning. So if you want them to transition to your new platform, you have to set up a scoring system that needs to be put in effort and a customer base that needs to be maintained, plus some extra benefits.
More and more people invest in products by paying attention and preserving information and accumulate the value of the product to itself.This increases the likelihood that they will use the product again in the future and the ways they invest have become varied.
Author: Lincoln Agnew
How to use it in your own products?
Investment and consumption consistency can also be applied to your products. Let your customers accumulate personal experience, build stuff or add personal information in your products, which will increase their likelihood of using your services in the future. The more they invest, the harder it will be to leave your product.
core knowledge points
- focus on how to add customer creation to existing products or services.
- ensures that these changes are marketed as value-added decisions, rather than saving labor costs practices. To some extent, it depends on your brand.
- provides personalized options early in establishing user flows to make customers feel proactive, which can effectively reduce late customer churn.
