Buying a steak is not a challenging task. We can simply choose portion (e.g., sirloin), quality (e.g., AAA), and weight (e.g., 8oz).
Steaknightmagazine.com
However, when I visited the SSG food market, a premium grocery store in Seoul, to buy a steak, I was asked to choose the thickness of the steak. Over there, I was provided with several pieces of wood plank in different thicknesses. Thanks to this tangible decision support tool, I did not have to scratch my head to figure out the numerical value of the steak thickness. Instead, I picked up one piece of wood plank and simply said “I would like to go with THIS thickness.”
Wood plank is a great example of evaluability hypothesis. It helps other visitors choose the right steak as well because thickness is difficult for people to evaluate. A specific value (e.g., 2 cm) is hard to tell another value (e.g., 3 cm) because we are not sensitive about it. About this issue, a group of psychologists introduced a concept of General Evaluability Theory about 10 years ago. (Here is a more recent post)
**
Reference
Hsee, C. K., & Zhang, J. (2010). General evaluability theory. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 5(4), 343-355.
A central question in psychology and economics is the determination of whether individuals react differently to different values of a cared-about attribute (e.g., different income levels, different gas prices, and different ambient temperatures). Building on and significantly extending our earlier work on preference reversals between joint and separate evaluations, we propose a general evaluability theory (GET) that specifies when people are value sensitive and when people mispredict their own or others’ value sensitivity. The GET can explain and unify many seemingly unrelated findings, ranging from duration neglect to affective forecasting errors and can generate many new research directions on topics ranging from temporal discounting to subjective well-being.
About an year ago, I met two artists who opened StudioBlank and carved wood like a bowling pin. They produced a single product: wood massager called Tapi. We discussed how to increase sales and I suggested them to vary its size in order to target different segments. For example, sales representatives might be interested in small-sized Tapi because they want to give something special to their clients.
Recently, I visited StudioBlank’s newly opened shop and found that the two artists did not simply change the size of their product but developed the product line. Now, they make and sell from typical massagers to aroma diffusers, wooden pillows, and special (acupressure) massagers.
Marketers wonder how to develop/extend the product line without sacrificing the consistency among the products. They tend to focus on visual cues such as brands, logos, or colors. However, product designers can use material, the essence of the product, as a vehicle to develop a successful product line.
