Fear, Greed and Lust

Marty Cagan argues that product people, despite often coming from analytical backgrounds, work fundamentally in the realm of emotion and psychology. He observes that people buy and use products mainly for emotional reasons, with enterprise buying driven by fear or greed and consumer use driven by more personal needs like loneliness, love, money, or pride. He recommends viewing products through this emotional lens to understand users, competitors, and design choices. Usability testing can double as a one-on-one exploration of which emotion drives each user. Finally, he notes that your real competition is often whatever else meets that same emotional need, including offline alternatives.

01Key takeaways

• Treat product work as understanding human emotion, not just features and metrics.
• Identify whether your enterprise buyers are driven mainly by fear or greed, and whether consumers are seeking loneliness relief, love, money, or pride.
• Recognize that different user segments may bring different emotional needs to the same product.
• Use usability testing to also learn which emotion drives each user and how well your product meets it.
• Define competition by the emotional need served, which often means offline alternatives rather than similar startups.

02Key sections

Emotion behind product decisions

Cagan points out the irony that product work, rooted in science and business, is largely about human emotion. He argues that people adopt products mostly for emotional reasons, which strong marketers and product people both recognize.

Fear and greed in enterprise, personal needs in consumer

Enterprise purchases are typically driven by fear of competitors, security breaches, or lost customers, or by the promise of making or saving money. Consumer products tap into loneliness, love, money, and pride.

Using the emotional lens

Applying emotional analysis helps teams see their product as users do and surfaces questions about competitors, visual design, and which features support or hinder the emotional need. Different user types may carry different emotional needs.

Apple and emotional design

Cagan credits Apple for understanding that users bond with products emotionally and that design is the key lever for meeting those needs.

Testing for emotion and identifying real competition

Usability tests can reveal the emotion driving each user, and once the dominant emotion is identified, teams should ask where else that need can be met, often finding offline alternatives are the true competitors.

03From the post

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04Frameworks mentioned

Summary and takeaways written by PM Atlas; quotes are short excerpts. © the original author.