Why do people buy your product? If you stack up enough benefits to outweigh the costs of purchasing it, do you automatically close the deal? It doesn’t always happen, does it? Consumers are not calculating machines. They are soft, warm, breathing humans with emotions that assign meaning and personal significance to your products.
How do potential customers evaluate your products (or services)? How do they trade off various factors before deciding? How are their emotions involved in the process? Consumers–whether they realize it or not–use up to six categories of emotional criteria when they decide to purchase your product.
Technical criteria
Technical criteria relate to what your product does. Every product performs a function. It may also perform additional functions or have features that make it easier to operate or use. If your type of product has been around for a while, everyone assumes it will perform its basic function. Marketing battles are fought on the ground of extra features and ease of use.
Does your product perform its core function better, faster, or more smoothly than your competitors’ products? Have you...