How to Get People to Choose Your Product

Contributor - Prashant Subhedar
February 26, 2025
6 min read

There’s a curious moment in the hit series Mad Men when the famously enigmatic Don Draper coolly explains advertising as an exercise in nostalgia, a potent cocktail of memories, desires, and a yearning for lost innocence. It’s compelling, poetic even, but also vaguely cynical. He makes marketing sound like emotional alchemy, less about product, more about the intangible yearning nestled quietly in the human heart.

Yet today, decades removed from Draper’s sleek, smoke-filled offices, the fundamental challenge remains the same: How do you get people to choose your product?

Why Nobody Actually Buys Products (Hint: They Buy Stories)

It’s easy, perhaps lazy, to assume that people buy based purely on price, features, or raw practicality. But beneath every rational purchase lurks a simmering stew of intangible motivations: identity, aspiration, anxiety, even guilt. People don’t buy sneakers; they buy dreams of athletic prowess. Nobody buys headphones; they purchase the illusion of solitude in a noisy world.

Great products solve practical problems. Irresistible products solve psychological ones

Take Patagonia, for instance. Sure, their jackets are warm and sustainably made, but the real reason we shell out premium dollars is less about polyester than it is about buying into an identity, ethical adventurer, nature lover, conscientious citizen. Patagonia doesn’t sell outdoor gear. They sell purpose, neatly stitched into every jacket.

Conversely, consider the cautionary tale of the Tata Nano, once touted as the world’s cheapest car. It was a technical marvel, affordable and efficient. And yet, it flopped. Why? Because in branding it as the “cheapest car,” Tata unknowingly robbed it of aspiration. In many emerging markets, owning a car is more about your societal status than a means of transport. The Nano, despite being practical, signaled a lack of wealth, not the gain of freedom. People didn’t want to be seen in the world’s cheapest car. The lesson? A product’s story matters more than its specs.

Beware the Rationality Trap

Companies obsessively perfecting their products based solely on rational criteria often run into the paradox of the “better mousetrap.” History is littered with objectively superior products that failed spectacularly, New Coke, anyone? The graveyard of great ideas is full because engineers forgot that consumers aren’t laboratory rats; they’re storytellers, spinning narratives about themselves with every purchase.

Sony Betamax was technologically superior to VHS yet failed because consumers gravitated toward the abundant availability and perceived convenience of VHS tapes. Rationality lost to simplicity, availability, and comfort. It’s a humbling reminder: Features might win awards, but feelings win markets.

Cultivate the Art of Subtle Persuasion

In the 1950s, Ernest Dichter, a psychologist and the so-called “father of motivational research” introduced the then-radical idea that consumers’ decisions were driven more by subconscious desires than by explicit needs. Dichter’s insights have aged gracefully. Today, successful brands subtly tap into consumers’ hidden emotional chords, weaving persuasion delicately rather than hammering home explicit messages.

Consider Apple. Its marketing has never dwelled on technical specifications; instead, it whispers sweet nothings about creativity, simplicity, and elegant rebellion. Apple doesn’t explicitly promise success or genius; it implies it, like a raised eyebrow at an inside joke. Subtlety here is more than a simple tactic, it’s elegance in marketing.

Know Your Audience—Better Than They Know Themselves

Data matters. But context transforms data into wisdom. Spotify’s “Discover Weekly” playlists feel almost telepathic. The secret isn’t merely algorithmic cleverness but empathetic understanding. Spotify’s algorithm knows more than your musical tastes; it knows the nostalgic places your mind wanders in on a rainy Tuesday afternoon.

Lenskart transformed the way Indians buy eyeglasses by understanding a few deep truths: many people delay buying specs because it’s boring, confusing, and often expensive. So, they brought the store home. Their “Home Trial” model, quirky campaigns with Bhuvan Bam and Katrina Kaif, and try-on AR tech spoke directly to millennial anxieties around convenience and style.

They knew their customers didn’t just want vision; they wanted validation.

Marketing isn’t telling customers what you have. It’s showing them who they might become.

The lesson here isn’t merely to collect data, but to interpret it through a lens of empathy. Successful brands not only anticipate customer behavior, but also their emotional trajectories.

Friction and Delight: The UX Paradox

Ironically, making your product too seamless can backfire. Consider IKEA, the furniture giant known for the bizarre strategy of making you assemble your own bookshelf, often a test of patience and relationships. Yet, consumers often find satisfaction, even pride in building their own furniture. This “IKEA Effect” (a term now well-established by behavioral economists) shows us something important: humans value products they invest effort into.

The takeaway? Introduce deliberate, thoughtful friction. Let customers earn their satisfaction. This strategy elevates the consumer’s emotional investment, enhancing brand affinity in ways frictionless products can’t.

The Magic of Imperfection

There’s an old Japanese philosophy called wabi-sabi, which finds beauty in imperfection and impermanence. Applied to products, wabi-sabi translates to authenticity, humility, and relatability. Perfect products may impress; imperfect ones create connection.

Take Levi’s jeans for example. Their branding and design intentionally celebrate wear and tear, transforming a product flaw, fading and fraying into a feature. Each rip and fade become a narrative, a physical history that customers deeply connect with.

Closer to home, FabIndia has built a quiet empire on the beauty of handwoven irregularities. Their clothing proudly wears its slight variations in color, stitch, and weave as a badge of craftsmanship rather than a flaw. In a world obsessed with factory-finish perfection, FabIndia invites its customers to embrace the human hand. Their labels often highlight the artisanal process, encouraging buyers to see each piece not as a defect-ridden product, but as a one-of-a-kind story woven with deliberate slowness. In doing so, they redefine value, not as precision, but as presence.

A Cautionary Tale: Beware "Choice Paralysis"

In a classic experiment famously described in Barry Schwartz’s The Paradox of Choice, consumers were offered samples of jams: first six flavors, then twenty-four. Counterintuitively, fewer choices dramatically increased purchases. Consumers faced with too many choices become paralyzed. This paradox underscores the delicate balance brands must strike: Offer enough choices to empower, but few enough to avoid overwhelming.

Why Bang Design Understands These Nuances

At Bang Design, we approach product design as storytelling. Design decisions go beyond aesthetics or functionality and into understanding your consumer’s narrative, desires, and quirks. It’s about weaving your product into their lives, not forcing their lives around your product.

If you want people to choose your product, first truly understand people.

We’ve helped countless companies transform their products from mere commodities into deeply personal experiences, products that people advocate, treasure, and share.

Because ultimately, getting people to choose your product isn’t about making a better mousetrap, it’s about telling a better story. And at Bang Design, that’s exactly what we do best.

Intrigued, curious, or simply ready to dive into why people choose what they choose, reach out. Let’s craft a compelling future together.

Design isn’t the layer you paint on top. It’s the conversation you begin with.

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