A Nir Eyal near&far podcast episode (YouTube transcript) about how companies can break competitors' customer habits and win users. Eyal defines habits as low-attention behaviors and introduces the Hook model (trigger, action, reward, investment). He outlines four high-level strategies to migrate user habits; the transcript so far explains two: (1) Faster hooks — reducing steps between intent and reward to win users (example: Netflix vs. Blockbuster), and (2) Better reward — making the experience more satisfying or stimulating (example: Snapchat's daily use among U.S. college students). The episode also contains a sponsor read for X AI and calls-to-action for listener questions.
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Hi, I'm Nir Eyal and this is the near and Far Podcast. This podcast is about business, behavior and the brain. On this show, I do a few things. I read quick articles I've written about topics shaping your behavior. I interview authors of books I enjoy, and from time to time I devote.
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4 ways to use psychology to win your competitors Customers by Nir Eyal and Read by Nir Eyal. Let's say you've built the next big thing. You're ready to take on the world and make billions, right? Your product is amazing and you're convinced you've bested the competition. As a point of fact, you know you offer the very best solution in your market. But here's the rub. If your competition has established stronger customer habits than you have, you're in trouble. The cold truth is that the better product does not necessarily win. However, there's hope. The right strategy can crowbar the competition's user habits, giving you a chance to win them over. To understand how to change customer habits, we first need to understand what habits are and how they take hold. Simply put, habits are behaviors done with little or no conscious thought. Research shows about half of what we do day in and day out. Is driven by these impulsive behaviors. Consider just about any product you find yourself using without thinking, and you'll find a hook. Do you sometimes check your phone without really knowing why? Hook Ever opened Facebook or Twitter to do just one thing, only to find yourself scrolling and tapping 30 minutes later? Hook have you ever found yourself unable.
To stop playing a game like Candy.
Crush Saga or Angry Birds? Hook Hook and More Hooks Hooks have four basic a trigger, action, reward, and an investment. User habits are valuable precisely because they do such a good job of keeping competitors out, making it exceptionally difficult for a new company to shake users from their existing routines. Here are four ways fledgling products can win over users from the competition and successfully migrate them from one product habit to another. Faster Hooks in his book Something Really New, author Dennis J. Hopley deconstructs the process of innovation into its most fundamental steps. First, Hopley states, understand the reason people use a product or service. Next, lay out the steps the customer must take to get the job done. Finally, once the series of tasks from intention to outcome, is understood, simply start removing steps until you reach the simplest possible process. Though it's excruciatingly simple, understanding Hopley's first principles yields big results. Removing steps between the user's recognition of a need and the satiation of that desire is at the core of all innovation. From the cotton gin to the iPhone, products that can shuttle customers through the four steps of the hook more quickly than competitors stand a good chance of winning them over to new routines. For example, take the corporate collapse of Blockbuster at the hands of Netflix, customers could watch the same movies at relatively similar prices from either movie rental company. Yet the ease of having a film always ready to watch versus needing to drive to the store to pick up a flick delivered the reward faster. The ease of satiating the need and passing through the hook more quickly made all the difference. Movie enthusiasts migrated their habits to Netflix, and Blockbuster subsequently filed for bankruptcy. 2. Better reward our brains crave stimulation. Whenever an experience is more satisfying, more interesting, or more rewarding, we want more of it. Sometimes products establish a new habit just because using them feels better. For example, take Snapchat, the massively popular messaging app, which 77% of American college kids say they use every day. The company is rumored to have turned down a $3 billion acquisition offer by Facebook, conceivably prompted by Mark Zuckerberg's fear of losing his grip on college kids habits. But why do so many users impulsively open Snapchat instead of Facebook? For many people, Snapchat is more rewarding Whereas using Facebook involves scrolling through a cluttered newsfeed of ads, posts from distant acquaintances, and message from tragically uncool relatives, Snapchat delivers pure high octane excitement.
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