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I can't remember who said it, but a customer buying a shovel is actually buying a hole. The customer doesn't care about the shovel he / she cares about solving

by snitzr 11y ago

I can't remember who said it, but a customer buying a shovel is actually buying a hole. The customer doesn't care about the shovel he / she cares about solving a problem.

trumpete 11y ago
Marketing and Strategy 101
arjie 11y ago
Dan Norman, in The Design of Everyday Things, quotes Harvard Business School professor Theodore Levitt as saying "People don't want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole!". Googling now, the quotation seems rather famous on its own.
- nsns 11y ago
  But wouldn't this quote only be true if said drill self-destructed after a single use?
  - TheLoneWolfling 11y ago
    Perhaps a better quote would be "People don't want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want (a) quarter-inch hole(s)!"
- ZeroGravitas 11y ago
  Great book (It's Don Norman BTW, rather than Dan), though thinking about the quote now, presumably the purchaser doesn't actually want a quarter-inch hole for its own properties, but has some further goal in mind that the hole lets them achieve and could peaked be achieved better without requiring a hole or a drill.
  - arjie 11y ago
    Funny about the name. I picked it up off my shelf to confirm the quote and got the author wrong. Amusing. In the book, Norman says exactly the same thing. That people are looking for something to achieve some goal, and the hole and, consequently, drill are just means to that end. Of course the spirit of the quotation is different. It means "serve the ultimate goal, not the task chosen to achieve that goal", so it encompasses this with some degree of rhetorical flourish.
netcan 11y ago
I think this tidbit comes from advice given to salesmen, and I think its useful in that context but not true. Bad salesmen get caught up in the product. Good ones usually focus on the person buying. Also, focusing on "the hole" gives a salesman more latitude to influence the buyer's reference products, prices and general buying psychology. This last point is only really important because people do not often buy holes, they buy shovels. In a buyer's mind, a shovel has price, some features, a lot of reference and comparison points. Holes don't. The involve labour and blisters and shovels and no point of reference. This is useful to a salesman. Basically, people will have completely divergent prices they would be willing to pay to get a hole, depending on the instrument used to dig one for which they will be paying. This is the principle at work when a user won't pay a 99c for online content unless it meets some incredible standard, but will walk out of a newsagent with a stack of magazines without much of a fuss. That's why there is a fundamental difference between selling an "online course" and an ebook, even if the content is similar. Books have a price. $200 is a very very expensive book (ripoff!), online courses don't have a defined price. So... uhmmm I disagree sir! (glove slap, pistols at dawn, onlooking maidens) People do buy shovels.

by snitzr 11y ago

I can't remember who said it, but a customer buying a shovel is actually buying a hole. The customer doesn't care about the shovel he / she cares about solving a problem.

trumpete 11y ago

Marketing and Strategy 101

arjie 11y ago

Dan Norman, in The Design of Everyday Things, quotes Harvard Business School professor Theodore Levitt as saying "People don't want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole!". Googling now, the quotation seems rather famous on its own.

nsns 11y ago
But wouldn't this quote only be true if said drill self-destructed after a single use?
- TheLoneWolfling 11y ago
  Perhaps a better quote would be "People don't want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want (a) quarter-inch hole(s)!"
ZeroGravitas 11y ago
Great book (It's Don Norman BTW, rather than Dan), though thinking about the quote now, presumably the purchaser doesn't actually want a quarter-inch hole for its own properties, but has some further goal in mind that the hole lets them achieve and could peaked be achieved better without requiring a hole or a drill.
- arjie 11y ago
  Funny about the name. I picked it up off my shelf to confirm the quote and got the author wrong. Amusing. In the book, Norman says exactly the same thing. That people are looking for something to achieve some goal, and the hole and, consequently, drill are just means to that end. Of course the spirit of the quotation is different. It means "serve the ultimate goal, not the task chosen to achieve that goal", so it encompasses this with some degree of rhetorical flourish.

netcan 11y ago

I think this tidbit comes from advice given to salesmen, and I think its useful in that context but not true. Bad salesmen get caught up in the product. Good ones usually focus on the person buying. Also, focusing on "the hole" gives a salesman more latitude to influence the buyer's reference products, prices and general buying psychology. This last point is only really important because people do not often buy holes, they buy shovels. In a buyer's mind, a shovel has price, some features, a lot of reference and comparison points. Holes don't. The involve labour and blisters and shovels and no point of reference. This is useful to a salesman. Basically, people will have completely divergent prices they would be willing to pay to get a hole, depending on the instrument used to dig one for which they will be paying. This is the principle at work when a user won't pay a 99c for online content unless it meets some incredible standard, but will walk out of a newsagent with a stack of magazines without much of a fuss. That's why there is a fundamental difference between selling an "online course" and an ebook, even if the content is similar. Books have a price. $200 is a very very expensive book (ripoff!), online courses don't have a defined price. So... uhmmm I disagree sir! (glove slap, pistols at dawn, onlooking maidens) People do buy shovels.