At-home good should trump in-store sizzle

In-store good or at-home good? is a post from a while back here at SvN. Here’s an updated take on the subject…

You know what it feels like. You go to a store. You’re comparing a few different products and you’re sold on the one that sounds like it’s the best deal. It’s got the most features. It looks the coolest. The packaging is great. There’s sensational copy on the box. Everything seems great.

But then you get it home and it doesn’t deliver. It’s not as easy to use as you thought it’d be. It has too many features you don’t need. You end up feeling like you’ve been taken. You didn’t really get what you needed. And you realize you spent too much.

You just bought an in-store good product. That’s a product you’re more excited about at the store than you are after you’ve actually used it.

Smart companies make the opposite: something that’s at-home good. At-home good is when you get a product home and you’re actually more impressed with it than you were at the store. You live with an at-home product and grow to like it more and more. And you tell your friends too.

When you create an at-home good product, you may have to sacrifice a bit of in-store sizzle. A product that executes on the basics beautifully may not seem as sexy as competitors loaded with bells and whistles. Being great at a few things often doesn’t look all that flashy from afar. That’s ok. You’re aiming for a long-term relationship, not a one-night stand.

This isn’t just about in-store packaging or displays. It’s true for advertising too. We’ve all seen the TV ad for some “revolutionary” gadget that will change your life. But when the actual product arrives in the mail, it turns out to be a disappointment. In-media good isn’t nearly as important as at-home good. You can’t paint over a bad experience with good advertising/marketing.

Matt Linderman wrote this on Jul 07 2009 There are 8 comments.

Joseph Thibault

on 07 Jul 09

There’s a difference though that’s important: if your product is “in store” the store is generating demand for you (just having your product there can be enough to generate sales—which makes sense for the great packaging). However, if you’re product generates it’s own buzz, etc, like Pure Digital did with the flip, then there’s no need to go to any store (so the packaging ends up being moot…).

so the question isn’t necessarily, what packaging do we want, it’s “do we really want this in the stores?”

Chris

Not just in-store but on-Web. I recently bought an external RAID drive (detailed review on my blog (via my link) if you care) that the company’s site claimed to be “quiet.” In no language that I’m aware of does the word “quiet” represent the incessant and intrusive fan noise this thing emits. It’s exponentially louder than any external hard drive I’ve ever owned. And it refuses to stay asleep. I literally hate this thing. It’s particularly frustrating since it’s such a beautifully designed object – yet it falls flat on its face in the user experience.

This had plenty of “sizzle” on the product website. It looked great, and the description made it sound like a perfect fit for my needs.

Not so.

If I had bought this in a store I could haul it back, moan and groan to the customer service rep, and get my money back.

But having bought it online (no local stores carried it), I now have to deal with an RMA and shipping the thing back. If the vendor who sold it to me would ever respond to my request for a return. :(

Michael

Frankly, this posting is flat-out wrong. I admire the author’s desire to make good products, products that people like and enjoy using. The author is completely right to have that desire, and the world would be a better place if every product were designed in the way he describes.

However, being “in-store good” is what sells products. Infomercials make millions of dollars with inferior products that are advertised in enticing ways. Shamwows (and related synthetic cleaning cloths) are incredibly cheap to make (buy the fabric by the roll, cut it up) and totally terrible at the job they are supposed to do, to the point that the commercials are essentially fraudulent… and they continue to rake in money hand over fist. Essentially 100% of Shamwow customers are dissatisfied with their purchase. That turns out to be no barrier to financial success.

The supermarket check-out lane is crammed with goods that appear attractive, but are inferior inside (candy bars, women’s magazines, etc.). Walmart and dollar stores are full of inferior products. “Sell the sizzle, not the steak” is an advertising maxim for a reason: it works.

In any real world face-off product A (good in store, crappy at home) will outsell product B (crappy in store, good at home) by a factor of 50 to 1, if not more. Product B will never get a chance to prove itself, the company which makes it will go out of business, and that’ll be the end of it. Company A will take the profits from their product’s sales, improve it by incorporating some of product B’s features, and go on to have a long and successful run.

Moral: presentation counts. First impressions count. Alternately, we could rewrite the headline to be truthful: “At-home good should trump in-store sizzle – but it doesn’t”.

J

Michael: It depends on what kind of company you want to be. If you want to make products that overpromise and underdeliver, then fine. I think the right advice is to not do that as you don’t have to do that. And you can sleep at night.

Grover

@Michael

While I don’t entirely disagree with what you’re trying to say, it’s entirely dependent on the revenue model of your business. How many people, after buying a Shamwow, buy another one? Where will the Shamwow company be in five years? 37signals’ products are a good example of a business where people actively choose to purchase their services month after month. If people are dissatisfied, they’ll quit using it after a month or two and find something else to spend their money on. But because their products are filled with at-home good, they’ll likely be in business and growing for years to come.

I’ve often thought this very thing about the two cars we own. I have a VW that is filled with neat little features that, after owning the car for three years, are actually the things I hate most about the car. I’ll likely never buy another VW. But the Hyundai we own has lots of thoughtful features that I never even noticed until a year or so down the road. And when I go to buy a new car, Hyundai is at the top of my list.

NInja Prawn

I think what you’re getting at is: don’t spend your time selling a product, spend your time making a product that sells itself.

MattH

Sometimes it’s out of the companies control. Several years ago I bought a 60 inch Sony projection TV. (Ich, project).

The picture looked fantastic in the store. I got it home and the picture was definitely not fantasic. I called the store and spoke with the sales person. He explained they had a beefed up, high quality feed from the cable company (kind of HD but before HD was mainstream).

It tarnished the Sony purchase – though not nearly as much as the store.

Mark

on 09 Jul 09

I agree with your sentimate, but would apply it to politics, an industry that has wrongly adopted the “sell the sizzle” marketing model. “In Office good should trump campaign good”.