What’s Product-Centricity?
Product centric organization is a company that puts the product and product-related issues to the forefront. Since product centrism is when the product is at the head of the company, all attention and all processes related to it: its design & development, optimization, and use are out there accordingly. Is it worthy to be a design product-centric organization? Let’s see.
Product-centric Pros
In product-centric companies, there are usually parts of the resources (human, time, financial) directed to a product or service: its research and creation. That’s quite normal when you product high-quality functional products to cater at the most sophisticated users demands. Product-centric model allows for driving efficiency and productivity. Here are more benefits:
Focus
Product orientation means that you focus solely on one thing: what you do best, which is creating a product or service. Resources are also directed towards creating the best product in their market niche (if it already exists), which, in some way, saves time and effort;
Reputation
The focus on the product means that the company is really investing in it, which means that this product is likely to be the best or one of the best on the market. This is very good for reputation: being best creates more lasting loyalty than ad hoc customer satisfaction, which can change quickly;
Consumer loyalty
Customers can be facilitated in an automated way and they can be served very quickly, which means product centricity improves customer experience. If the product is unique or the market niche is still underdeveloped, then customers become dependent on the product. This means that customers who are addicted to you will not think about leaving your brand as long as its features have value for the audience.
Optimization of communication
Standardization and automation of customer communications is one of the greatest benefits you get with a product centric organization.
Unified measurement
Simplified measuring of success due to less complexity and one product for all strategy if possible, as well as simple incentivizing and performance measurement aligned with product metrics may be applied.
Product-Centric Examples
For example:
During the promotion, the company focuses on improving the quality of the product, adapting it, releasing updates with new features and capabilities for customers, and launching new versions and analogs. A kind of natural selection works here: if the product survives (shows good results in the market and attracts customers), then it is promoted, if not, it is closed or remains without marketing and support.
Google is known to be one of the brightest product-centric companies in the world.
Apple
Apple is also one of a few product-centric brands. If you are building some really innovative product that is one of its kinds like this one and whose need has not yet been realized in the marketplace, then going product-centric is the best way.
Product-centric Cons
The principal cons of a product-centric company are the fact that you may have a myopic vision of the company through the product lens. Because of that it may just blindside you from evolving and changing your product focus in accord with more global tendencies or shifting the users’ needs. You may also focus on short term product sales, but at the expense of long-term customer loyalty.
Weak product-market fit
A good product is not always the right product. If you do not focus on customer needs, there is a risk of creating a product that is poorly suited to the market. And this means that it will either not have an audience, or it will be very limited — which puts a limit on the scaling of the company.
More attraction & retaining sources
Instead of building a product or service into existing customer behaviour, that behaviour needs to be changed. Therefore, it is important for product-oriented companies to work on customer education in order to form new approaches to the implementation of processes and instill new habits.
Risks
Being able to create a wow product the world hasn’t seen before is really hard, let’s be honest. The chance that the product will skyrocket and enter the market is not so high — therefore, very few startups with innovative solutions survive the first years after creation and do not close. Businesses have to blaze a new road, and this, of course, is a big risk and a lot of resource consumption.
Customer-Centric Examples
There is a range of product-centric vs customer centric companies worldwide from various industries. Among customers centric, there are also famous brands. Customer centricity is the ability of organization teams to understand their customers’ needs, situations, perceptions, and expectations, and do their best to meet them.
Netflix
The success of this company reveals that consumers need and want products that are very easy to use and tailored to match their most needed preferences. Every company, no matter the industry, may learn from Netflix and apply the same principles of innovation, disruption and personalization cantered around the user.
Salesforce
Salesforce is considered to be an operating customer centric model company because it’s applying their technology to achieve customer-centricity. It provides you the technology stack to dwell on an extensive strategy that is able to merge customer relationship management (CRM), integration, data and so much more.
Amazon
Amazon is a good example of a customer-centric brand.
Product centric vs Customer centric
The major difference between strategies of a product-centric company from a customer-centric one in that a company that will be cantered on their product is more likely to build their customer base on how much value the product brings. It will also dramatically rely on the product’s core features, innovations and functionality to sell heavily. Here’s a nice productcentric vs customer centric illustration.
Final Thoughts: Which is better?
No matter if you decide to use Digital Product Design to create either product-centric or customer centric model company, do it wisely.
The main feature of the product-centric operating model is that supply is higher than demand. All innovative things are created in this way. Like Apple’s creation of the first computers, and smartphones were all product-centric because the audience did not yet require this product. They just formed, grew, and educated their users, no one thought it was possible.
This means that if you create products like that, the company will be working on providing a product when customers have not yet realized their need for it. Product-centric marketing will be focused on selling such products or services somehow.
The customer-centric approach will differ dramatically and is more likely to be defined and greatly depend on your customers’ needs . If you have a disruptive startup, want it or not a product-centric model will be a better way. If not — customer centric approach will do, just like human centred design and many others.
