祝融说。

In my team, there is one iron rule. Whoever breaks it gets kicked out immediately. No exceptions, no second chances.

This rule has nothing to do with being late or leaving early, nothing to do with KPIs, and nothing to do with professional ethics. It is very simple: at any product selection meeting, you are forbidden from starting a sentence with "I think."

"I think this blue looks better." "I think young people will like this feature." "I think this price is too high."

Every time I hear words like these, my blood pressure spikes instantly.

You think? What makes you think that? Who are you? Whom do you represent? Are you the one paying for it?

You are not the user. Your preferences are worthless. You are not the market. Your judgment has no basis. On the brutal battlefield of business, "I think" is the three most expensive and most foolish words in the world. They will flush your money down the drain, turn your hard work into dead inventory, and leave you, trapped in a fantasy of self-satisfaction, to be mercilessly ground to dust by the market.

The only sign that a product selector has truly matured is "killing the self."

You must imagine yourself as a surgeon, with "the market" lying before you as your patient. Your job is not to express your artistic taste, but to make a precise diagnosis, locate the lesion, and excise it with the most effective scalpel. Your personal feelings and aesthetic preferences are the most dangerous contaminants in the operating room.

A novice selects products by "me." I like, I think, I want. A master selects products by "him." He suffers, he complains, he desires.

This chapter will hand you four razor-sharp scalpels so you can thoroughly dissect the body of "the market" and excise every cancer cell in your mind labeled "I think." When you achieve complete "selflessness," you will have laid the foundation for becoming a top-tier practitioner.

1.1 The Lie of User Personas: Do Not Look at What They Search For; Look at What They Curse

Let us begin with the first trap, the one you are most familiar with and most likely to fall into: the user persona.

Almost every marketing course teaches you to build user personas. They have you solemnly fill out a table -- age, gender, region, income, education, hobbies, and so on -- and then, facing this dry "paper doll" that looks lifted from a statistical yearbook, you try to guess what it would like.

This is a monumental joke.

This kind of demographically driven user persona has become completely obsolete in today's era of hyper-fragmented consumption and wildly diverse personalities.

A 25-year-old white-collar woman living in Beijing, earning ten thousand a month, could be a cosplayer who wears hanfu, a punk who listens to heavy metal, or an "urban farmer" who goes to the suburbs to grow vegetables on weekends. What can you define about her with the labels "25, Beijing, white-collar"? Nothing. You cannot define anything.

Even more fatal, traditional user personas steer you toward an extremely dangerous data dimension: search terms.

A novice gets a user persona and immediately thinks, "Great, since my target user is 'beauty-conscious young women,' let me see what they are searching for."

They open the data software and see "hydrating mist," "whitening essence," "anti-wrinkle eye cream"... The search volumes for these terms are terrifyingly high. So, excited, they dive right in, find a factory, get products made under their own brand, and launch their own "hydrating mist."

And then what?

They walk into a meat grinder built by giants like L'Oreal, Estee Lauder, and Winona. Their product sits on page fifty of the search results. Their ad budget burns out in a minute. Their price is higher than everyone else's. Nobody has heard of their brand. They drown in an ocean of information without so much as a ripple.

Remember my first iron rule: Search terms represent needs that have "already been met," solutions that have "already taken shape," and "public knowledge" that everyone can see.

When a user searches for "hydrating mist," the solution of "mist" is already in her mind. All she needs to do is compare existing brands and products. This land has been tilled countless times, and every inch of soil is packed with competitors. As a newcomer, what right do you have to fight over it?

The truly valuable information lies not in what users are actively "searching for," but in what they are passively "enduring." The gold mine is not in the trending searches. It is in the negative review section.

So here is my methodology: Do not look at what they search for. Look at what they curse.

"Cursing" is the most genuine, most unfiltered form of human emotional expression. A single negative review hides more commercial value than ten thousand searches. Positive reviews may be bought or merely polite, but negative reviews -- especially those heartfelt ones running hundreds of characters -- are most likely the user's true feelings, torn from the depths of their heart.

The users who have been "hurt" by the top-selling blockbuster in your category -- their complaints are your roadmap for overturning that blockbuster.

Let us return to the "hydrating mist" example. If you follow the trend and make one, you are dead. But if you are a "negative review hunter," what would you do?

You would find the best-selling hydrating mists on the market, scrape every one of their negative and neutral reviews, and copy them into a document. Forget the "rave reviews" -- those are just face for outsiders. Negative reviews are the substance you can turn into money.

You might see complaints like these:

• "It shoots out a stream, not a mist! It sprayed all over my face and ruined my makeup! Garbage!"
  • Opportunity: What the user wants is "mist," not "water." The nozzle technology must be top-notch, delivering genuine "nano-level atomization" like a wisp of smoke brushing the face.
• "Too big. It does not fit in my little bag, and it is so inconvenient to carry around."
  • Opportunity: Portability. It needs to be lipstick-sized or card-sized, slipping easily into any mini bag.
• "My face got even drier after spraying. It feels like a bottle of mineral water. Total tax on stupidity."
  • Opportunity: Ingredients. Users are beginning to doubt whether plain "water" works. You need to add genuinely effective moisturizing ingredients such as hyaluronic acid and ceramides, and explain the mechanism clearly in your marketing.
• "It is a metal can, so I cannot take it on a plane. I have to throw it away at every security check. Infuriating."
  • Opportunity: Packaging material. Pressurized cans are a security pain point. You could develop a non-pressurized, compliance-friendly small plastic bottle.
• "The nozzle clogged or broke after a while, and the bottle went bad with half its contents left."
  • Opportunity: Quality and structure. The stability and durability of the nozzle mechanism is an overlooked quality moat.

Do you see it now?

When you organize these "curses," a brand-new product image that crushes every competitor on the market automatically floats before your eyes: a lipstick-sized essence mist that can be taken on a plane, fitted with a nano-nozzle that produces true ultra-fine mist, infused with hyaluronic acid for hydration, and built with a stable, durable nozzle -- a "post-makeup rescue essence mist."

Does this product still need to compete with those selling "big bottles of mineral water"?

Not at all. You are no longer operating on the same dimension. You can sell it at three times their price, and users will still think you are professional and considerate. You are no longer solving the vague need of "I want hydration," but pain points as specific and maddening as "my makeup is ruined," "my bag is too small," and "I am afraid of confiscation at security."

This is the power of the "negative review product selection method." It turns you from a follower into a disruptor. It turns you from a participant in price wars into the creator of a new category.

[Practical Guide: Build Your "User Complaint Intelligence System"]

1. Intelligence sources:

   • E-commerce negative review sections: 1-3 star reviews on Taobao, JD.com, and Amazon; focus on long reviews with images and follow-ups.
   • Social media complaints: Comment sections on Xiaohongshu, Weibo, and Douyin, searching keywords plus "does not work," "regret buying," "lifelong blacklist," "talked out of it."
   • Vertical communities and forums: Douban's "anti-haul" groups, high-voted critical answers under Zhihu's "How is product X?", Hupu's streets, and relevant Reddit boards.
   • Competitor customer service records: If you have access, or have done customer service yourself, the most common complaints and return reasons are a gold mine.

2. Intelligence analysis method (the "C.A.T." model):

   • Categorize: Group the complaints you collect into dimensions such as [functional defect], [design and aesthetics], [usage experience], [mismatched price], and [after-sales service].
   • Analyze: Within each category, look for high-frequency keywords. Is it "too heavy"? "Too noisy"? "Too ugly"? "Too slow"? "Too troublesome"? Turn these high-frequency words into a word cloud.
   • Target: From these high-frequency complaints, lock onto one or a few "core complaints" that you consider most critical and that existing technology or supply chains can solve. This core complaint is your new product's "killer blow."

Starting today, take half the time you spend on the trending searches and spend it on the negative review lists. While others sing praises for a blockbuster's dazzling numbers, you should be like a vulture, hunting for the rotting flesh beneath its glossy exterior. Because rotting flesh is where new life begins.

Instead of staring at your competitors' strengths in fear, sink your blade into their weaknesses. This is the truth of the market.

1.2 The Seven Deadly Sins Product Selection Method: Greed, Sloth, Vanity... Behind Every Bestseller Lies a Human Weakness

If you have already learned to find opportunities in complaints, congratulations, you have graduated from kindergarten. But to enter university, you will need to master a more foundational and more profound tool of insight.

That tool is human nature.

The essence of business is satisfying needs. And at the far end of every need lies an inborn weakness of human nature that can never be fully eradicated. Theologians summarized them as the "Seven Deadly Sins": greed, sloth, vanity, envy, gluttony, lust, and wrath.

This sounds dark and amoral. But business is not preaching; business is catering. You are not here to judge human nature. You are here to serve it.

Peel back any bestseller that triggers mass adoption, layer by layer, and at its core you will find it precisely, extremely, even indulgently catering to one or more of the Seven Deadly Sins.

The "Seven Deadly Sins Product Selection Method" gives you a pair of "X-ray glasses for human nature," letting you see straight through to the underlying drivers of any product. Once you can think through this framework, you will no longer be fooled by a product's flashy surface.

Let us dissect each of the Seven Deadly Sins, one by one, and see how they built commercial empires.

Sloth: Get the Maximum Result with the Minimum Effort

This is the easiest to understand and the most widely applied. Every advance of human civilization is essentially driven by "sloth." We were too lazy to walk, so we invented the car; too lazy to wash clothes, so we invented the washing machine.

The core of sloth-based products: save time, save effort, simplify processes.

• Robotic vacuum cleaners: Let you clean the floor from your couch. The ultimate expression of sloth.
• Food delivery platforms: Let you taste the whole city's cuisine without leaving home. The best solution for those too lazy to cook or to go downstairs.
• Pre-made meals and self-heating hotpots: Shrink the time to make a meal from an hour to fifteen minutes.
• One-button, foolproof software and apps: Why did Meitu Xiuxiu beat Photoshop to become a national app? Because it turned the complex technical task of photo editing into a lazy "one-tap beautify" operation.

Product selection approach: Find a scenario in daily life that people find "troublesome," "laborious," or "time-consuming," then ask yourself: Can I make a product that cuts this process from ten steps to three, or even one?

Greed: Craving More, Craving a "Bargain"

Greed is not only a craving for money; it is more a psychology of "getting excess returns."

The core of greed-based products: value for money, freebies, gifts, added value, betting small to win big.

• Pinduoduo's "help cut the price": The ultimate exploitation of people's greedy desire to "get something for free."
• "Buy one, get one free" and "second item half price": Make you feel you "scored a deal."
• Paid courses and knowledge communities: They sell not knowledge itself, but the greedy expectation of "getting rich or successful fast."
• All financial products and lottery tickets touting "high returns."

Product selection approach: Can my product make users feel they are "getting two things for the price of one"? Can I design a model where users feel they have a chance to "get it for free"? Can I use bundling or gift strategies to make them feel they have gained an enormous advantage?

Vanity: Craving Attention, Recognition, and Admiration, Proving One Is Superior to Others

Vanity is the hard currency of social interaction. In the age of social media, the commercial value of vanity has been magnified countless times. People are not buying products; they are buying "personas."

The core of vanity-based products: brand, labels, design, scarcity, social currency.

• Luxury goods: The logo is the totem of vanity. A canvas bag stamped with LV may cost a few dozen yuan to make but sells for tens of thousands -- what it sells is vanity.
• Apple's iPhone: Every year a new model is released, and the highest-end version is always sold out. It has long transcended being a communication tool to become a symbol of status and taste.
• Afternoon tea sets at Instagrammable spots: Whether the food tastes good does not matter. What matters is whether it photographs well and can earn a wall of likes on your feed.
• Limited-edition sneakers and art toys: Manufacture superiority through scarcity. Owning one means you are an "insider."

Product selection approach: Does my product have a "photo-worthy moment"? Can it help users construct an "ideal version of themselves"? (For example, using my product makes you look more refined, richer, more tasteful, more knowing about life.)

Envy: The Craving and Resentment That Arise Because Others Have What You Do Not

Envy is vanity's twin, and the most powerful engine of consumerism. The influencer and KOL economy is built on the foundation of "manufacturing envy."

The core of envy-based products: imitation, trend-following, fads, tribal culture.

• The lipsticks that "all the girls" scramble for in Li Jiaqi's livestreams: When the host shouts, "Ladies, this color -- star X is using it too," what is being stirred is envy.
• The countless "celebrity-wear" viral items on Douyin: The phrase "same item as X" is itself the commercial expression of envy.
• The yoga pants brand worn by the fittest person in the gym.

Product selection approach: Who is the "opinion leader" in my target user group? What are they using? Can I create a product that becomes the "standard issue" in this circle? Can I use marketing to make users feel, "If I do not have this, I am out of touch or left out"?

Gluttony: Losing Oneself in Unrestrained Sensory Indulgence

In modern commerce, "gluttony" is no longer confined to food. It refers to any behavior that is indulgent, addictive, and delivers instant gratification.

The core of gluttony-based products: thrilling, addictive, can't-stop-using.

• Short-video apps (Douyin and TikTok): The infinite scroll, the precise algorithmic recommendations, hand you a small dose of dopamine every few seconds, and you simply cannot stop. This is spiritual "gluttony."
• Snack variety packs, sugary sodas (cola): High sugar, high calories, directly stimulating the brain's pleasure center.
• "Loot boxes" and "gacha" in online games: Use random reward mechanics to keep you pouring in money and time.

Product selection approach: Can my product deliver a "climax moment" during use? Can it create in users the urge for "one more time"? (For example, blackhead remover tools, stress-relief toys, snacks with an overwhelming flavor impact.)

Lust: The Desire for Sexual Attraction and Intimacy

This is one of the most primal and powerful drives, but also the one that requires the most discretion in commercial application. It is often hidden beneath a more respectable exterior.

The core of lust-based products: sexiness, charm, hormones, attracting the opposite sex.

• Perfume, lipstick, cosmetics: Their spec sheets say "moisturizing," "brightening," but what they truly sell is the fantasy of "enhancing allure and attracting the opposite sex."
• Lingerie, sexy sleepwear.
• Fitness courses and protein powder: The ads always feature impeccably fit models, implying that using this product will give you an equally attractive body.
• High-end sports cars: Often seen as "male aphrodisiacs."

Product selection approach: Can my product make users feel "more attractive"? Is it helping them complete a display for "courtship"? (This approach should stay very subtle -- a hint and no more.)

Wrath: Venting Frustration, Seeking Revenge, or Fighting Injustice

Wrath is a destructive force, but it can also give rise to constructive business opportunities.

The core of wrath-based products: solve infuriating problems, provide a sense of security, defy authority.

• The "sewer hair removal hook" from the prologue: It solves a problem annoying enough to make you want to swear. The very act of unclogging the drain with it is a catharsis of anger.
• Dashcams: Pitted against the wrath of "insurance fraud" and "unfair traffic accident rulings."
• Products bearing an "anti-X" label: For example, the "anti-gravity" phone case exploits your anger at dropping and shattering your phone.

Product selection approach: In what scenarios do users feel "fed up" or "furious"? Can I provide a tool that converts that anger into a "sense of control"?

[Practical Guide: Examine Your Product with the "Seven Deadly Sins"]

Take your product, or the product you are considering, and ask yourself one by one:

• Does it cater to sloth? (Does it make things simpler?)
• Does it cater to greed? (Does it make users feel they got a bargain?)
• Does it cater to vanity? (Can using it be shown off on social media?)
• Does it cater to envy? (Is it a KOL-same item that triggers follow-the-crowd behavior?)
• Does it cater to gluttony? (Is it addictive and satisfying?)
• Does it cater to lust? (Does it make users feel more attractive?)
• Does it cater to wrath? (Does it solve some maddening pain point?)

A mediocre product may hit none. A decent product hits at least one precisely. A bestseller often hits a combination of two or three. And a great product, like the iPhone, covers nearly all of the Seven Deadly Sins.

Do not try to build a "saintly" product that educates users or elevates their moral standards. Your job is to build a "devilish" product that understands the dark side of human nature best. Users will morally despise these weaknesses while honestly opening their wallets to pay for your insight.

1.3 Essential vs. False Needs: Redefining Products with the "Pain Point, Itch Point, Pleasure Point" Model

If you already grasp the underlying drivers of human nature, next we need a more operational model for judging whether a particular need is a genuine "essential need" worth its weight in gold or a short-lived "false need."

Many people talk about "essential needs," but their understanding is stuck at the textbook level of "food, clothing, shelter, transportation." That kind of understanding is useless in today's commercial world.

I never use the crude dichotomy of "essential" versus "non-essential." I use a more three-dimensional and precise model: "pain point, itch point, pleasure point."

• Pain point: This is a survival-level need. If you do not solve it, you feel miserable, even unable to live. It is like a thorn lodged in your flesh that you must pull out at once.
• Itch point: This is a life-and-social-level need. It is not life-threatening, but scratching it feels wonderful. It satisfies your desires, your vanity, your "ideal self." It is like a patch of eczema on your skin -- it does not threaten your life, but it mars your appearance.
• Pleasure point: This is an instant-gratification-level need. It is a momentary, explosive pleasure. It is like riding a roller coaster, giving you an unexpected thrill and a peak experience.

Any need can be measured along these three dimensions for its intensity and its nature. And a product's success or failure depends on which point it hits, and how deeply.

Pain Point: The Cornerstone of Business, the "Painkiller" for Needs

Pain-point products are the hardest currency in the commercial world, because they solve "have-to" problems.

• Characteristics: Strong drive, high repeat purchase, users actively seek them, relatively price-insensitive.
• Judgment standard: Without this product, the user would feel "pain," "trouble," "anxiety," or "loss."
• Examples:
  • Prescription glasses: The most typical pain-point product. Without them, the world is blur.
  • Cold medicine: The misery of a headache and a runny nose forces you to buy it.
  • Baby diapers: For new parents, a night without diapers is an unimaginable disaster.
  • My "sewer hair removal hook": It solves the intense pain point of a clogged, nauseating bathroom drain.

Product selection approach: The core of pain-point selection is "problem orientation." Look for the scenarios where users constantly complain, "it is too troublesome," "it is too painful," "what am I supposed to do." Your product is that simple, direct "solution." Pain-point products do not need to be beautiful, but they must be "effective."

But building only pain-point products easily falls into the trap of "tool-ification." Users remember you only when they need you, use you and leave, with zero loyalty. And if your solution has a low technical barrier, countless imitators will rush in and drag you into a price war.

Itch Point: The Profit Amplifier, the "Beauty Filter" for Persona

Itch-point products solve the problem of "want" rather than "need." They do not solve survival; they solve "presence."

• Characteristics: Emotion-driven, high premium, dependent on marketing and content, easily forms a brand.
• Judgment standard: Without this product, the user's life goes on unchanged; but with it, the user feels "better," "more beautiful," "more tasteful."
• Examples:
  • Starbucks coffee: You need caffeine (pain point), but you could easily drink instant coffee. The reason you spend 35 yuan at Starbucks is for that green logo, that third place, that "urban white-collar" persona (itch point).
  • Lululemon yoga pants: Any pair of athletic pants satisfies your workout pain point, but Lululemon, with its unique community culture and brand story, scratches the itch of middle-class women for "self-discipline, health, and taste."
  • Fragrance diffusers, candles, figurines: They do nothing for your physical survival, yet they richly satisfy your spiritual and aesthetic needs.

Product selection approach: Itch-point selection is "value oriented." You should not ask "what functions does my product have" but "what does my product represent?" and "what flattering label can it attach to the user?" Itch-point products must invest heavily in design, aesthetics, story, and culture.

Pleasure Point: The Traffic Detonator, the "Stimulant" for Addiction

Pleasure-point products chase the ultimate "user experience." At some instant of contact with the user, they must deliver surprise and satisfaction far beyond expectation.

• Characteristics: Strong experience, high virality (users exclaim "Wow!" and share), drives impulse purchases, easily creates a memory point.
• Judgment standard: During use, does the user produce the instant feedback of "so satisfying," "so stress-relieving," "so fun"?
• Examples:
  • The unboxing experience: From the moment you tear open the plastic wrap on an Apple product, every step of the design is engineered to create a "pleasure point."
  • Bubble-press stress-relief toys: The "pop" the moment you press a bubble is pure pleasure.
  • Peel-off masks and blackhead nose strips: The instant you peel it off and see it covered in "spoils" -- that visual impact and the satisfaction it brings is a pleasure point.
  • The "pentakill" sound effect in games, the perfectly timed background music in short videos.

Product selection approach: Pleasure-point selection is "experience oriented." You must be like a film director, designing every "touchpoint" where your product meets the user. Is it sound? Feel? Vision? Scent? Is there a single instant that can produce a physiological thrill?

The Practical Guide: Forge a "Pain Point + Itch Point + Pleasure Point" Trinity Bestseller

Mediocre sellers work on only one of the three points.

• Only a pain point: They become a "tool vendor" without profit.
• Only an itch point: They become a "tax on stupidity" without roots.
• Only a pleasure point: They become a "viral toy" that blazes hot and dies.

Top-tier operators combine all three to forge an invincible "product monster."

Let us deconstruct a phenomenal bestseller: the Dyson hair dryer.

1. Pain point (the foundation):

   • Core pain point: Dry hair quickly. (The baseline for every hair dryer.)
   • Deep pain points: Traditional hair dryers damage the hair (scorching it with heat), are deafeningly loud, and are heavy enough to tire your arm.
   • With its high-speed digital motor and temperature-control technology, Dyson perfectly solved these deep pain points. That is the root of its legitimacy.

2. Itch point (the premium):

   • Design: A futuristic bladeless design that completely overturns people's conception of a hair dryer. It does not look like an appliance; it looks like a work of art.
   • Brand: "Black tech," "British geek spirit," "middle-class standard issue" -- these labels satisfy users' strong vanity and sense of identity. Spend 3,000 yuan on a Dyson and you are buying not just a hair dryer but entry into a "high-quality life" circle.

3. Pleasure point (the detonation):

   • Sound: It emits not the raucous roar of a traditional hair dryer but a sharp, distinctive, tech-laden whine. That sound alone is highly recognizable and shareable.
   • Airflow: The first time you use it, the sensation of that powerful yet non-scalding air surging out delivers a "Wow" surprise.
   • Magnetic nozzle: The nozzle that clicks satisfyingly into place -- this tiny interaction detail, full of ritual and premium feel, is a classic experience pleasure point.

Do you see it now?

The reason Dyson can sell for 3,000 yuan and still be chased by countless admirers is that it uses the "pain point" to make you feel you "need" it, the "itch point" to make you feel it is "worth it," and the "pleasure point" to make you feel "delighted." It is a perfect union of pain, itch, and pleasure.

So when you select a product, stop simply asking, "Is this an essential need?" Examine it through this three-dimensional model:

• What level of pain does it solve? Life-saving, or merely slightly annoying?
• Which itch does it scratch? Vanity, or aesthetics?
• At which moment does it design a scream-worthy pleasure point? Unboxing, or the process of use?

The stronger the pain point, the more enduring a product's life; the more precise the itch point, the larger its profit margin; the more explosive the pleasure point, the faster it spreads. Command all three, and you may call yourself king.

1.4 The Scene Revolution: The Product Does Not Matter; the Moment It Appears Does

This is the final section of the chapter, and the one I believe best embodies the "God's-eye view."

If you already understand complaints, human nature, and the "pain-itch-pleasure" model, you are already an excellent product selector. But to become a master, you must also grasp one ultimate principle: scene is king.

All our previous discussion seems to revolve around "product" and "people." But we overlooked the one critical medium that connects "people" and "product" -- the scene.

Whether a product is good or bad, what it is worth, even what it is, is not decided by the product itself but by the "scene" in which it sits.

Discussing a product outside its scene is hooliganism.

A bottle of mineral water sells for 2 yuan in a supermarket -- that is its "daily consumer goods" scene. The same bottle, priced at 20 yuan in a five-star hotel room, lives in its "premium service" scene. The same bottle, offered in the Sahara to a traveler dying of thirst, can be traded for a gold bar -- that is its "life-saving supply" scene.

The water is still that same bottle of water. Its physical properties have not changed in the slightest. What changed? The scene. It is the scene that redefines the value of the water.

The Red Bull I mentioned earlier is the most classic case of scene thinking. If Red Bull were placed in the "beverage" scene, set beside Coca-Cola and juice, it would be doomed. Its taste is odd, its price high, with no advantage at all. But Red Bull's founder, with a stroke of genius, created an entirely new scene for it: "energy drink." What is the scene? "When you are tired and sleepy." Within this scene, everything changes. The odd taste becomes "the flavor of a functional drink"; the high price becomes "an investment in your vitality." Red Bull does not sell a beverage; it sells a solution -- a solution for a specific scene.

So-called product selection, at a higher dimension, is really "scene selection."

Once you can think in terms of "scene," your vision widens instantly. You are no longer hunting for a product on a shelf; you are combing through all twenty-four hours of a user's daily life for the "moments" that have not yet been satisfied.

[Practical Guide: How to Use "Scene Thinking" for a Dimensional-Reduction Strike]

Method One: Scene Segmentation -- Slice a Big Race Track into Countless Small Heavens

Do not start by declaring, "I want to make a cup," or "I want to make a power bank." Thinking that starts from a "category" is doomed to land you in a red ocean.

What you must do is take that category and, like cutting a cake, slice it by scene into countless segmented, uncontested micro-markets.

Case: Power banks

• Category thinking (a dead end): I want to make a power bank with big capacity, fast charging, and a low price. -- You will find thousands of such products already on the market.
• Scene segmentation (a way out):
  • Scene 1: Lying in bed late at night playing on your phone, the battery dies, but the charging cable is not long enough.
    • Product opportunity: A "bedside lazy person's power bank." No need for large capacity -- 5,000mAh is plenty. But it must come with an extra-long, soft built-in cable. Or simply be a small-capacity battery attached to a wireless charging pad that sticks to the nightstand.
  • Scene 2: A woman carrying a mini bag to a party, her phone running dry.
    • Product opportunity: A "lipstick power bank." The capacity can be small, just enough for a 30 percent top-up, but it must be lipstick-sized, look like a fashion accessory, and come in macaron colors. It sells not electricity but "emergency backup" and "accessory."
  • Scene 3: Outdoor camping enthusiasts need to power their phone, speaker, and camp light at once.
    • Product opportunity: An "outdoor mini power station." Huge capacity, rich ports (AC, DC, USB), a tough, durable, waterproof, drop-resistant shell, ideally with an integrated LED camp light.
  • Scene 4: Business travelers need to charge both a laptop and a phone.
    • Product opportunity: A "PD fast-charge business power bank." It must support high-wattage PD protocol to charge a laptop. The look should be understated and professional, the materials premium.

Do you see it? Through scene segmentation, the vast red ocean of "power banks" was instantly decomposed into four brand-new blue oceans: "bedside scene," "social scene," "outdoor scene," and "business scene." Each scene maps to a unique product form, a precise cluster of users, and an independent pricing logic.

Method Two: Scene Creation -- Conjure Something from Nothing, Define a New Lifestyle

The higher play is not to adapt to existing scenes but to "create" a new scene, educating users into a new way of life.

Case: The portable blender Before it appeared, the juicing scene was essentially fixed in the "kitchen." Blenders were all huge, bulky, and hard to clean. But one group created a new scene: "fresh juice at the office." They launched a compact, USB-charged portable blender whose lid you simply swap after blending so you can drink straight from the cup. They told consumers: At the office, you can use fresh fruit to whip yourself up a healthy afternoon drink in thirty seconds. This new scene detonated the market instantly. Because it struck several itch and pain points of the white-collar crowd: "pursuing health," "office ritual," "social sharing."

They were not selling a blender. They were selling a "healthy, convenient, refined office lifestyle."

[Rename Your Product with Scene Thinking]

Once you master scene thinking, even the way you name a product changes. A great product name should carry its scene within itself.

• Do not call it an "alarm clock"; call it a "painless wake-up smart sleep-assist light" (scene: the whole arc from falling asleep to waking).
• Do not call it a "storage box"; call it a "trunk clutter organizer" (scene: the messy car trunk).
• Do not call it a "foot-soaking tub"; call it an "office lunch-break leg spa" (scene: fragmented relaxation during the office lunch break).

A name with a sense of scene lets the user grasp "why I need you" within a second. Its marketing efficiency is usually markedly higher than that of an ordinary name -- the exact multiple varies by channel, but the direction is certain: the name itself is a statement of need.

Conclusion: The Metamorphosis from "I Think" to "He Needs"

In this chapter, we carpet-bombed your entrenched beliefs about product selection on four levels.

• 1.1 The Lie of User Personas: Made you abandon your superstition about "searching" and become a negative review hunter panning for gold in "complaints."
• 1.2 The Seven Deadly Sins Product Selection Method: Gave you a pair of X-ray glasses for human nature, letting you see through to the deepest drivers behind every bestseller.
• 1.3 Essential vs. False Needs: Gave you a "pain point, itch point, pleasure point" three-dimensional model to precisely measure the commercial value of every need.
• 1.4 The Scene Revolution: Made you step beyond the product itself, discovering and creating opportunities from the higher dimension of "moment" and "scene."

These four scalpels have one core purpose: to thoroughly kill the "I think" in your mind and turn you into a pure, cold, precise observer of the market.

This is a painful process, because it demands that you negate yourself. But only by completing this cognitive "breakthrough" will you truly earn the ticket into the world of master product selectors.

Now you have shattered the shackles of cognition, and you are ready to face the real market. But the real market is dense with data, charts, and curves. And these data, too, can lie.

In the next chapter, I will teach you how to work like a detective, cutting through the fog of data to find the one truth that leads to wealth.