The demand is the first button, this one is wrong, and the back is wrong. Is there a fundamental difference between big data and the prevailing market research?
Billions of commodity transactions happening every day in the world are the product of conflict. To do marketing, we must study the needs of users. Any business activities and market activities must study user needs. All business opportunities, industry opportunities, channel opportunities, category opportunities and even brand opportunities come from demand.
Researching user needs is the number one priority for companies. Levitt said: “If the company uses all its energy to meet customer needs, then other problems will be solved.”
But how did the user’s needs come from? How can we accurately grasp it?
First, several misunderstandings to grasp user needs
The first thing that marketing beginners want is to do research. “There is no right to speak without investigation.” They think that the user will tell you everything and judge his needs based on the user’s past behavior.
But the truth is, users don’t know what they want, as Jobs Biography says: People only want a faster carriage before the car is invented.
If the market demand can accurately grasp the market demand, then the new products developed by the same industry companies that invest huge amounts of money for research should be the same.
Therefore, senior bosses and marketers know that the role of market research is only a reference, and its significance is quite limited. Some extreme entrepreneurs, such as Jobs and Zong Qinghou, are clear-cut market research opponents. In fact, from the telegraph, telephone, computer to the Internet, Windows, smart phones, few great inventions in the history of human commerce are inspired by market research.
Traditional market research has a limited role, so what is the current big data? It is said that in the near future, when you go out on the phone and do not need to talk, the other party knows what you want to do and arranges the best course of action for you. The other party will know all the conditions of everyone in your account and can tell you the back. Whether the wife will find a lover will not help.
This is just a delusion.
What can big data help us? If the law allows it, and does not count the cost, big data can be “smart”, that is, to master all your past behaviors, and to digitize it, easy to organize.
In other words, in theory, big data can be done in the first stage of the “sensible stage” of understanding, but can it rise to the second stage, the “conceptual stage of understanding”?
The answer is possible. With regard to the current level of artificial intelligence, it is possible to make a simple regular summary of human social behavior if all aspects permit. However, it is still difficult to carry out a deeper summary of the law. After all, human behavior is extremely complicated, more complicated than Go, and the behavior of social groups is more complicated. As for the rise to the third stage, the “the theoretical stage of understanding”, it is necessary to develop artificial intelligence to a stage that completely replaces human beings and even can rule human beings. At present, there is no sign of technological development.
In short, big data has a great help to the perceptual knowledge of consumer behavior. It is a more detailed and objective market research, but the current and future role of exploring human needs is still very limited.
In the view of Nobel Prize winner Thomas Sargent, artificial intelligence is actually statistics. I don’t know what the future will be, at least the current artificial intelligence is still in the statistical category. Marketing expert Fang Gang said that at present, the stock market is the best in big data in various industries, but how much do you earn from stock trading?
Big data can’t help you too much. Is it necessary to rely on geniuses such as Edison, Jobs, Rebs, Musk, Ma, and Ye masters to “blink a blu-ray”?
Obviously this is even more unreliable. Not to mention the potential demand, is to give an innovative thing to the big coffee, they often look away.
Wang Chuanyang refused to pass Ma Huateng, Ma Huateng refused Ma Yun, Zhou Hongyi refused Wang Xing, and Wang Xing refused the process dimension.
Relying on the insight of the master, the judgment of the demand is also prone to deviation.
Why do we always fail to meet demand and cannot seize market opportunities? Why do we even turn a blind eye to even if someone else has already put the demand forward, or even put the product in front of us, even if it is a cow?
Second, conflict is the lower logic of demand
There are five types of needs: external demand, real demand, unspecified demand, extra demand, and hidden demand. The form of expression is more varied and varies from person to person.
There is a lower level of logic below the requirements. If you only look at the demand itself, it is easily confused by the intricate demand phenomenon. If you can master the underlying logic, you may be more “quick and accurate” to seize the demand, and even a trick to make an enemy, a blow to death.
What is the underlying logic under demand? Let’s take a look at a few short stories.
1. “The old one is like a scorpion and the scorpion is terrible.” From “Han Feizi.” What do you mean? Saying that Shang Wang used ivory chopsticks to frighten his uncle and scorpion, this scorpion is known as one of the “three sages of the late Yin Dynasty”. The big cow is also said to be the founder of North Korea. The reason he is afraid is that if you use ivory chopsticks, you will not use the pottery bowl. Instead, you will use the jade bowl silver cup and use the jade bowl silver cup. If you don’t want to have a rough tea, you will want to eat the mountain and seafood, and you will not wear it. Weaving a small house, we must wear a brocade to live in a big palace. From then on, we will live a life of extravagance and extravagance. As a result, as the scorpion expected, Dashang was quickly killed by Zhou, and Yu Wang became an outstanding representative of a generation of faint princes.
Please think about it: The king is arrogant and arrogant. He is in a high position and has unlimited power. It is very easy to embark on a path of extravagance. Why does the nephew wait until he uses ivory chopsticks to feel worried?
2. “Two peaches kill three people.” It can be described as the pinnacle of Chinese art. I don’t want to talk about the specific content. I think the officials know that it’s a sinister idea of the blind man: two peaches are assigned to the three warriors. As a result, the three people disputed because of the distribution problem, and they finally committed suicide.
Please continue to think: Gongsun, Tian Kaijiang, Guyezi three volunteers, was originally a good friend, why not fight for strength in the weekdays, for the two peaches to fight for death?
3. “Camping Research.” An experiment by Turkish sociologist Muzafir Sharif. He found some boys who had never met before to participate in camping activities. The results of the study were:
It is very simple to want to trigger the hostility between these boys. Just assign them to two dormitories to create the feeling of “we and them.” If you give the two dorms a name (the rattlesnake and the eagle), the hostility will be even stronger, and the two sides have begun to depreciate each other. After the experimenters introduced some competitive games, such as tug-of-war and other sports activities, the hostility of the two sides could not be cleaned up. They began to smash, steal and burn the flags of the other party, and posted threatening notes until they fought.
And to eliminate these hostility is also very simple, just need to erase the boundaries between the two sides, let them participate in the cooperative activities, that is, set a common goal for the two teams, whoever leaves the two can not do. After several rounds of running-in, the cracks of the two groups disappeared.
Please think: Competition and cooperation are the social instinct of people. Under what circumstances does it stimulate people’s desire for competition? Under what circumstances does it stimulate people’s desire for cooperation?
4. “New York Metro Management Case.” It is the most famous application of “broken window principle”. It is a household name and it is not covered here.
Then think again: Why does a broken window lead to a complete window being smashed? There is an old saying in China that “there is a lot of people breaking the wall and pushing the wall down.” What is the reason behind it? Why is the dirty environment worsening the crime rate?
“Contradictory Theory” believes that everything in the world contains two aspects of contradiction. Contradiction is the fundamental driving force and source of promoting the development of things. The same is true of the demand, which is caused by conflicts between two aspects and even multiple aspects.
The king has ivory chopsticks, and the ivory chopsticks are not in harmony with the original clay bowl. There is a conflict. In order to solve this conflict, a jade bowl silver cup is needed. However, with the jade bowl silver cup, a new conflict with the rough tea is produced again. When the rough tea was changed to the rare food, the conflict with the original clothing and the original residence was reflected. The king also had the need to live in a grand palace wearing a gorgeous brocade.
Similarly, a broken drum, a broken window, and a wall that will be dumped are themselves incomplete. They are naturally conflicting. They can’t help but smash and push a hand to solve the psychological problem when they see the broken things. conflict.
Third, against one dollar thinking and static thinking
Most people’s marketing thinking is to unify the needs, looking for demand from various demographic parameters, such as income, age, gender, education, region, culture, etc.; or from the inherent needs of human nature In the middle of looking for, the most talked about is the seven sins and Maslow’s five-tiered needs: arrogance, jealousy, anger, laziness, greed, overeating, lust, physical needs, security needs, social needs Respect for needs and self-fulfillment needs.
Of course, this is necessary to grasp the needs of users, but it is not enough.
Demand is dynamic and development, and two or more things are developed in conflict. Everyone is a mixture of animal and social, and a mixture of good and evil. Everyone’s thoughts are both subjective and projection of objective conditions. These are all conflicts.
Conflicts are ubiquitous, conflicts generate demand, and billions of commodity transactions every day in the world are the product of conflicts, and there are more conflicting activities behind these apparent conflicts.
4. Conflict is the “original drama” foundation of the product.
The most important sentence that the advertising guru Leo Burnett said is: “Every piece of merchandise has a dramatic side. Our most urgent task is to discover the above characteristics for the goods, and then make the merchandise dramatize into a hero in the advertisement. “”
This sentence is summarized as the search for “inherent drama” and became the soul of Leo Burnett’s creative philosophy.
Then let’s ask the next question, what is the drama? What is the drama of the product?
For the masses of melons, the drama is of course fun, exciting, lively, unexpected, and exciting. It is best to have a few reversals. This is just the appearance. Drama theorists believe that conflict is the essential feature of dramatic art. Conflict is the main driving force for the development of the plot; the long-term statement of the Chinese drama community is: “There is no drama without conflict.”
What is the drama of the product? Is it that the products will fight with the products, and the buns are smashing each other? Or an example:
Weilong spicy strip is one of the most popular net red products in the past two years. In a moment, it is a funny style of the comics of the runaway, and it is a cold apple wind for a while, and it is a great pleasure.
Wei Long’s brain hole is open enough to attract a lot of casual food to play with him. Isn’t it a “fresh, strange and interesting” snack food?
However, the “new novelty” of others has not achieved the same success as Weilong. Most of them feel low and have a strong sense of cottage. Behind the “new novelty” on the surface of the spicy strip, there is a script that is different from others. For the post-80s and post-90s, the spicy strips carry the memory of a generation, a dime, almost everyone has eaten, in the age when the material is not so rich, this is almost the taste of human beauty. But the spicy strips at that time were covered with junk food labels: “unhealthy”, “fried”, “excessive additives”, “no nutrition”, “unhygienic”, etc. Children’s eating spicy strips was opposed by parents.
During the campus period, the generation of children lived in the conflict of “being tempted by spicy food but being restrained by parents and not having much pocket money”.
And when they went to the society and the economy was able to be independent, Wei Long skillfully used the upgraded products and content in line with the modern Internet context to evoke their original inner conflicts. Conflict is an important feature of dramatic art.
Delicious + nostalgic feelings + Internet content, is the three sharp edges to resolve their conflicts, so that Weilong spicy strips quickly rose to a generation of net red.
The drama of the product is not in the product itself, but in the ability to project customer conflicts onto the product.
I often hear people say that good products can talk on their own, this is embarrassing. Products can’t be refined, never talk, good products are to let customers talk, it is to hit the conflict of customers, and even create conflicts, so that customers do not spit.
V. Conflict is the soul of the story
Schultz’s Integrated Marketing Communication Theory (IMC) has also been born for almost 30 years. For many years, it has been misunderstood by “Jianghu Langzhong” as “combined marketing of aerial advertising and ground pushing”. propagation”.
In today’s mobile Internet era, IMC has been recognized by a large number of enterprises, especially Internet companies. “Marketing = communication” and “designing various marketing elements by means of communication” have begun to gain popularity.
Since it is about communication, it is also necessary to talk about where the motivation for communication comes from.
The external driving force of communication is of course from publicity and marketing activities, including advertising, news, product packaging, promotional activities and so on. What is the internal motivation of the spread? The answer remains a conflict. Nowadays, people do marketing like “telling stories” and “speaking feelings” because there are natural conflicts between “story” and “sentiment”.
Only when there is a conflict can the development of the storyline be more vivid, easier to remember, easier to form a topic, and more easily spread.
Sixth, the “biochemical endlessness” of conflict
Contradiction holds that contradiction is the fundamental driving force for the development of things. The traditional Chinese culture also believes that everything has two opposites and is unified, which is called “yin and yang.”
The constant movement and interaction of yin and yang is the root of the change of all things. The ancients referred to this change as “biochemical endlessness.”
Everything changes are formed through the interaction of yin and yang. Life and death also come from this fundamental law, which is the secret of all nature.
The “contradictory theory” in philosophy and the “yin-yang theory” in traditional culture are used in business as “conflict theory.” Conflicts in two aspects and even in many aspects have promoted the development of business and marketing.
In summary, the summary is as follows:
1. Demand can be infinite, even if our wealth increases by 10,000 times, demand will not be fully satisfied, and the market will always be filled with huge opportunities.
2. No big demand will come out of thin air. Demand is the product of conflict and the result of the operation of two or more contradictory parties. Conflict is the underlying logic of demand. The greater the conflict, the greater the demand, the greater the conflict, and the greater the chance.
3. Demand is moving, changing, not static, metaphysical, and the law of demand changes is determined by conflict.
4. Conflicts are ubiquitous and universal. Conflicts are subject to subject and objective conditions and have particularities.
5. Conflict not only requires lower-level logic, but also exists in all marketing elements such as products, channels, brands, positioning, market segmentation, consumption scenarios, communication, connectivity, and marketing organizations.
6. Conflict is the first step of strategy. Conflict is business, that is, marketing, that is, brand, that is, mode, that is, strategy, that is, all activities of the enterprise.
7. Conflict is the fundamental internal driving force of marketing development. Product innovation, demand mining, branding, market positioning, and value chain design are all created by solving or creating conflicts. Conflict is the basis of the product’s drama, the soul of the story, and the fundamental focus of brand resonance.
8. Third-rate marketing finds conflicts, second-rate marketing resolves conflicts, and first-rate marketing creates conflicts.
The author of this article is the chief consultant of Shanghai Yihe Marketing Agency and the president of the Conflict Research Institute.
Grasp the misunderstanding of user needs
1. Market research is only a reference
The role of market research is only a reference, and its significance is quite limited. Some extreme entrepreneurs are clear-cut market research opponents.
2, big data
Big data has a great help in perceptual knowledge of consumer behavior, but the current and future role of exploring human needs is still very limited.
