- How can product managers effectively balance the desire to innovate and introduce new features with the need to address buyer resistance? What strategies can they employ?
As product managers advocate for consumer interests, they should be careful of the line between what consumers want and what they or sellers may cast as what would be best for consumers. As executives and product managers greatly overvalue their innovations at 9x the amount viewed by consumers, it is necessary for product managers to locate themselves in the position of the consumer’s current situation with (or without) their current product to understand their inclinations to change, rather than try to speak from a position of authority over what consumers should want.
To find a balance between innovating and addressing buyer resistance, product managers should emphasize prior customer feedback and input in shaping new offerings. This not only helps product managers and design teams understand what customers want, but also what costs customers are willing to incur for a new offering. For example, when considering the switch from plastic to paper bags, how willing are customers to use less durable storage bags to help support the environment? These strategies help product managers create new products and features that integrate more easily into customers’ existing behaviors.
More broadly, the reading advocates for easy sells, or incremental changes rather than large feature overhauls to attract and retain buyers. Though perhaps these outcomes may not be as forwardly lucrative as big new ideas sourced internally from higher-up decision-making powers, they may be far outweighed by the actual rewards from avoiding buyer resistance and winning over buyer loyalty. As shown by the endowment effect and the subjective determination of value in consumers, when creating new features, it is crucial to maintain the consumers’ core source of sentiment and value that familiar products hold and utilize new features to augment rather than change them entirely. The status quo bias and the endowment effect point out a large potential benefit to this if developed correctly. If you can satisfy customers and win over their loyalty by responding to their wishes and integrating gradual product improvements, they will be far more inclined to stay with the brand and product when given something new. A competitor’s new and wildly innovative will then no longer be as appealing of an option, even if an outside perspective may ascribe it as objectively cooler or far more valuable. So, if product managers can properly understand and respond to customer wants, new outside offerings will pose less threat and only encourage product loyalty.
