Product development often follows a logical, scientific path. You apply new technologies, innovative ingredients, and creative thinking to either reduce costs or improve performance. Comparative testing is then used to measure consumer reactions—against your original product and your competitors. If you’ve cut costs, the hope is they won’t notice. If you’ve made improvements, the hope is they’ll like them.
After all, products are designed to deliver—to do a job, meet a need, fulfil a purpose. On paper, they’re rational, practical, and their success can be measured.
But it’s rarely that simple.
Consumers are emotional, not rational. Their reactions can seem inconsistent, unpredictable, even frustrating. They may recognise the product is technically improved… yet still prefer how it used to be.
That’s because product development isn’t just about making better products—it’s about making products that consumers perceive as better. And that’s an entirely different challenge.
Unfortunately, consumers often don’t know what they want—and when we ask, their answers can be confusing, contradictory, or just plain wrong. Not because they’re trying to be unhelpful—quite the opposite. Most people want to give useful feedback. So when you ask how to improve a product, they’ll do their best to answer, even if they’ve never thought about it before. Ask them to compare Product A to Product B, and they’ll give you an opinion—even if the difference was barely noticeable.
When asked a direct question, consumers often engage in what psychologist Daniel Kahneman called System 2 Thinking—a slow, deliberate, effortful process. But in reality, when they buy and use products, they rely on System 1 Thinking—fast, intuitive, automatic responses.
That’s why a purely logical, feature-focused development process often fails to connect. To truly innovate in a way that consumers value, we must understand their emotional needs—and the emotional journey they experience with your product and brand.
Focusing solely on product features might result in technical improvements. But if those changes don’t enhance the consumer’s emotional experience, they’re likely to go unnoticed—or even be rejected.
When you focus on how your product makes consumers feel, and identify ways to improve that emotional journey, your changes start to matter. Consumers may not be able to explain exactly why—but they’ll sense that they prefer the new version. It just feels better.
And here’s the key insight: even if your changes don’t objectively “improve” the product, they improve the consumer’s experience of it—and that’s what shapes perception, preference, and loyalty.
It’s not magic. It’s a simple shift in focus—from improving the product itself, to improving how consumers experience and perceive your product. But to your competitors, it might just look like magic, as they puzzle over what you changed—and why your market share is growing while theirs is not.
You can order a copy of my new book, The Shape of Taste, here:
Chris Lukehurst is a Consumer Psychologist and a Director at The Marketing Clinic:
Understanding the connections between the consumer experience and emotional responses.
