What Do Consumers Really Want?
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Principles of Lean Consumption
First, we need to remember that most of us consume to solve problems. These may be little problems, such as finding, buying, and using the apparatus needed to enjoy music; or they may be big problems, like finding, buying, and maintaining a comfortable home in which to live. Often, we aren’t as interested in the goods and services themselves – as we are in what they can do for our lives. Therefore, it follows that our acts of consumption must actually solve the problem. A partial solution – a new computer that won’t talk to the printer – is no solution. We want our problems solved completely.
Second, we would like our problem solved cost effectively, with minimum expenditure of our time and effort. As society develops and standards of living rise, the one item we never have more of, is TIME. To the best of our knowledge, there is no research underway in any laboratory anywhere on increasing the number of hours in the day or days in the week. Thus the conservation of personal time and effort for more valued uses becomes an ever more important objective.
Third, we would like to obtain exactly what we need to solve our problem, including all necessary goods and services in the exact specification required. We don’t want to make substitutions or go away empty-handed.
Fourth, we want to solve our problems where we need them solved. In the most recent age of self-service, the customer has either gone to the store or ordered directly from the producer. In the emerging age of lean consumption many products will be available at multiple locations for comparable prices. That is to say, you will be able to solve your food problem by going to the big-box warehouse, the traditional grocery store, or the small convenience store, or get home delivery with web-based ordering.
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Fifth, we want to solve our problem when we need it solved. As we see, current provision systems typically involve strangers ordering goods and services from strangers. It is not surprising, therefore, that most consumers give the provider no warning that an order is coming. Unfortunately, typical production systems, can’t provide a high level of service in the environment. It turns out that in the world of lean consumption, the notion of ‘when’ means very different things to different consumers.
Finally, many of us would like to reduce the total number of problems we must solve. The obvious means is to bundle them. For example, many of us might appreciate a “solution provider” to put the vehicles we need in our driveway for a simple usage fee in order to solve our mobility problem without ever having to think about it. How about a shopping solution so the items needed arrive at our homes when we need them, without fetching them ourselves. Moving the fundamental unit of consumption from many individual items to few aggregated solutions is a major leap.
Note that none of the above principles focuses on the specific attributes or performance of products themselves: the car, the software, the insurance policy. Today the product is often not a problem. Unfortunately, many firms making goods and providing services cling to product-centric focus. Because they oversee only one element of the total consumption process, they often overlook the consumer’s total experience in finding, obtaining, installing, maintaining, upgrading, and disposing of the products needed to solve the problem.
Source: From “LEAN SOLUTIONS – How Companies and Customers Can Create Value and Wealth Together” by James P. Womack and Daniel T. Jones??