Stop Listening to the Customer

chapter 11 creating weakness

In the many focus groups I've been involved in, not once has a participant said, ‘I want the shopping experience to be more difficult, and I want the product to be more complicated to use'. I'm pretty sure no-one at an IKEA focus group said, ‘Make it harder for me'. As outlined in chapter 5, IKEA places several barriers in a consumer's path, but it remains one of the most successful companies in the world. Paradoxically, the irritating shopping experience and need to construct the furniture yourself mean consumers value the brand more highly. This chapter builds on the ideas outlined in chapter 10 and offers practical ways to make brands more sticky in the mind of consumers through creating weakness. You can:

1. force friction
2. be wasteful
3. make mistakes
4. make a mess.

This chapter builds on the ideas outlined in chapter 10 (so if you are skipping chapters, read the last one before you read this one) and offers practical ways to make brands more sticky in the mind of consumers by creating weakness.

1. Force friction

‘What's different here?'

As we glide through the day, most of us operate on autopilot (or System 1 thinking, as discussed in chapter 3). This is especially the case with people glued to their phones. So how do you make people pay attention if they're about to encounter something dangerous, such as a railway line? New Zealand rail company KiwiRail faces this issue every day. In New Zealand there are several urban level crossings, which means ...