From a consumer standpoint, this article brought to light new things I haven’t thought of before. In the article, they say, “These behavioral tendencies are universal, but awareness of them is not.” I recently switched to Arc a new web browser because I was attracted to the level of customization it provided and how easy it was to switch across different web profiles. However, I only used it for a week because i found it to hard to use, as in, I was already very used to using chrome browser with the tabs on the top of the window and tab grouping, that using Arc didn’t feel natural and the cost of using a new browser everyday outweighed the benefits Arc was providing. Even though I would love to continue using Arc for it’s benefits, it’s not convenient for me.
Thinking about it from a product manager’s perspective,
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?
Product managers should be able to understand this inherent bias that consumers have first of all. They should also be able to understand the bias they possess as creators of the new products or features. Like mentioned in the article, we overvalue the benefits of our products, while consumers overvalue what they already possess. Once this is all understood, they should strive to innovate for low degree of behavior change required of the consumer and high degree of product change involved. They should aim to provide a lot of benefit without making consumers feel a cost for the changes they have to implement. With this, product managers should do deep research in consumer wants and needs. Knowing what consumers need and want will make them more likely to make the change that is needed. If the product is something unwanted and not needed it is a sure failure. Like Arc, although they were striving for a cool design, easy back and forth across profiles, and easy access to favorited sites, the extreme change in layout from traditional browsers caused the loss of a consumer because it required too much behavioral change. If they would’ve kept a more traditional layout, I probably would’ve continued to use it.
