I went to the Lego store the other day and wanted to buy a set of Lego toys for my son. After buying a Lego set, I was attracted by a bunch of spelling instructions. Originally, I didn't intend to buy a "meat bucket" set (Lego sets with many particles and cheap unit price are collectively called "meat buckets"), but I was deeply attracted by these combinations with wide brain holes. I thought that I could play so many games with my son and decided to buy it. Figure 1 Lego provides detailed assembly instructions for each product, which is full of creativity. In fact, products are not just products that we think can provide core services. Is the assembly instruction a product? That's right. Many entrepreneurs will confuse the concept of products. I want to talk about "products" in a long article. Through this article, you will know: What is a product? What is the relationship between products, services and experiences? What elements does a complete "product" contain? How to understand the essence of products from the perspective of 4P? What is a product? A product is anything provided to the market to attract attention, obtain, use or consume to satisfy desires or needs. Products include not only tangible products, such as cars, computers and mobile phones. Broadly speaking, products also include services, events, people, places, organizations, ideas or a combination of the above. Therefore, Huawei's mobile phone is a product, Starbucks' coffee is a product, and the ten-day tour in Europe and the advice of experts are also products. Even Gu 'an Industrial Park or Zhangjiajie Scenic Area can be regarded as a product. Ma Yun said that Alibaba's best product is organization, which continuously exports excellent managers and entrepreneurs to the Internet industry. This is also a product. Products are everywhere. When it comes to products, you can't help but mention services. Now more and more products are provided in the form of services. Compared with products that we narrowly understand as "physical objects", services have two differences: services are intangible businesses that sell services without transferring ownership, which helps us to understand the difference between services and products. Doctors consume time and energy, transform experience and ability, and output effective treatment plans. Bookstores rent books and transfer the right to use them at a certain time. Sometimes, experience is also a "product". Disney has been creating dreams and unforgettable memories for consumers through movies and theme parks. Travel is also to meet the needs of consumers through experience. Figure 2 Disney's "products" are wonderful experiences, experiences and memories. In my opinion, the experience is more based on the scenes and feelings used by consumers, and it is always the feedback of users. Nike has been promoting: "shoes are not that important, what matters is how you feel in them." Figure 3 Nike's products are tangible sports shoes and the values of "Justdoit". Paying attention to the user's experience is what businesses that do any products and services should do. Products in a broad sense include physical products, services and experiences. The form is different, but the product is essentially a solution: to solve the problems encountered by customers and meet their needs. So, what elements are products made of, and what level of problems do they solve? What elements does a complete "product" contain? A complete product has three levels, as shown in Figure 4. Figure 4 Three-level product model I found that these three levels just correspond to the three levels of "golden thinking circle": Why-What-How. "Why" expounds the metaphysical essence of products, and what is the real intention of customers to buy? "What" answers the question of How to meet the needs of customers, that is, the form of the product "How" ensures that users can obtain peripheral services and ensure a smoother use process. Fig. 5 golden thinking circle model 1, the first layer: core layer-core customer value (why) The answer is why, why do customers buy your products? What does the buyer really buy? Like the relationship between a drill and a hole. What customers need is not a drill bit, but a hole. What the customer needs is not a hole, but a nail for hanging pictures. What customers need is not a painting, but photos of their families traveling all the time and enjoying their family. When answering this question, we should bear in mind that any product is just a solution for customers to solve problems. The times are changing, the demand is upgrading and the technology is iterating. Eventually, other products will take its place. This is the inevitable law of things. Just like from BBS to MSN, to QQ, to WeChat, no product can last forever. On this floor, we can ask another question. What problems do customers want to solve when using your products? For example, let's look at a case. Why do so many people buy lipstick recommended by Li Jiaqi? Li Jiaqi's marketing copy is very interesting. He can always see the "little secret" in a woman's heart: very high-end, very HighFashion, and the old lady's extravagance. You don't mess with me, I don't mess with you, but you dare mess with me. The old lady put your click smell under the drizzly forest, wearing a white gauze skirt, walking by the sea, very clean smell, lagoon garden, girl who fell in love with her boyfriend, very happy to find a boyfriend. Being rich, fashionable and loved is probably the dream of all women. Li Jiaqi used lipstick as a carrier to describe specific scenes and explore the deep-seated needs of women. Fig.6 Li Jiaqi uses lipstick as a prop to meet women's demand for beauty. Lipstick is only a medium, and the deep-seated needs of customers should be well grasped. Revlon executives said that in the factory, we produce cosmetics, and in the store, we sell hope. 2. The second layer: the middle layer-what does the product, service or experience itself (what) include? Brand, packaging, design, characteristics and quality level. For example, the iPad, its product composition is not just a tablet computer. First of all, it has a brand, and behind a product is a strong brand system. It also has exquisite and concise packaging. Just like Apple's hardware design, this minimalist style has even become a fashion beauty. Apple's unique iOS system has also become its unique feature. More importantly, the quality level of Apple computer is stable, which enables it to be quickly copied to all parts of the world. Products are equivalent to a complete system, and they all constitute a "product". Here, packaging is also an important part of product composition, which solves the basic function of containing and protecting goods. However, with the increasingly fierce competition and the increasingly crowded and messy retail shelves, packaging has become an important marketing tool, taking on the sales responsibility of communicating with consumers. Figure 7 The packaging of 7iPad conforms to Apple's minimalist style, attracting extremely simple and beautiful users. 3. The third layer: the outermost layer-extension products (How) Build extension products around core interests and products, including after-sales service, guarantee, product support, delivery and credit conditions. The extension of the outermost layer of the product is more of a service, which solves a problem: buying a product does not mean that the problem is really solved. How can products really help consumers solve problems? For example, after-sales service, product support, guarantee agreement, and even credit card, installment, 7-day unreasonable refund and other similar transactions and credit conditions. These extended products help consumers to use the products with more confidence, and also help them to make purchase decisions more quickly. Here I give three cases that happened to me to help you understand the extended product. The first expanded product: 7-day unreasonable return price of Chaos Institute course 1 198 yuan. For many customers, this price still needs to be considered. If the customer thinks about it, there will be difficulties in choosing, and in the end it will often be abandoned. They won't buy it because they can't make a decision. Chaos is very clever. They set a compensation condition: you can get a refund if you are not satisfied one month after the first purchase. This greatly encouraged everyone to audition. You can return it if you are not satisfied. Give it a try. The same is true for Tmall to return goods for 7 days without reason. People hate loss. Once they get what they have, returning it is a loss. This is also the reason why merchants bear the freight insurance, so that more people can buy it at buy buy. Figure 8 The second extension of Tmall's 7-day unreasonable return policy: product support and scenario simulation product support can be sales tools. The Lego directive I mentioned earlier has turned product support into an intuitive visual scene. All the non-stick pans in the supermarket are scrambled eggs. In TV shopping, scenes are used to help customers understand the goods. This is the principle. I saw the story of an entrepreneur in a program the other day. He sold rainbow circle, but it didn't sell well at first. Later, he developed a superb and original performance skill of rainbow circle, and a night market could sell 50 pieces. A friend of mine is a child model trainer. She told me that they hold a young model contest every year, and they also bring some luxurious children's clothes to sponsor clothes to improve the level of the competition. Many people sign up for training just to watch other children participate in the model league competition. Competition and training are products, and competition is a kind of scene product support. Figure 9 The back-end product of children's model training is the third expansion product of fashion show: platform ecology. At the same time, many supports are platform support, such as Apple's iPhone, iPad, Mac and other hardware products. Relying on APPstore to download the latest software, iCloud provides cloud storage services, and customer service, maintenance and repurchase platforms all provide customers with all-round life cycle services. Similarly, Alibaba is also an e-commerce ecosystem: Taobao and Tmall solve information flow, Alipay and Huayuan solve capital flow, and rookie solves logistics. Many products are not an isolated individual, but an ecological platform behind them. How to understand the essence of "product"? From the perspective of 4P, the product is the first step of 4P and the starting point of user insight. From the perspective of enterprise management, enterprises push their products to the top of Wan Ren through channels and marketing, reducing resistance. According to the conservation of energy, the more potential energy products accumulate, the easier marketing will become. Liu Run, the teacher who got the APP, once said that you accompany customers to drink because the products don't sweat. I'm impressed. Apples don't need to be sold Every year when a new mobile phone is released, everyone will queue up to buy it. Therefore, a good product is not everything, but it is absolutely impossible without a good product. From the perspective of building relationships with customers, products are tools for building and maintaining relationships with users. In the era of industrialization, products are products with economies of scale, and we use products to find customers. This is the logic of media sales. But today is the era of users, and products have become a tool to build user stickiness. Tools can be substituted, but the relationship is long-term effective. Product is not an end, and customer relationship is the foundation of enterprise's survival and development.