How to Build New Reasons to Buy in the Age of Consumption Saturation
Once functional needs are saturated, how brands can create new reasons to buy from pain, fear, delight, itch, and the hidden frustrations consumers live with daily without noticing.
A few days ago I was talking with a friend who makes dry-cell batteries. They sighed: there’s nothing left to innovate in this category. Every reason a consumer might buy has already been said by someone, functional needs were met long ago, and all that’s left is grinding it out on price.
That line sounded awfully familiar. Ask people who make soy sauce, tissues, or laundry detergent, and you’ll hear almost exactly the same tune. People who have spent more than a decade in an industry hold a deep-rooted judgment about the product they sell: it’s mature, it’s peaked, there’s no new demand.
This is the curse of knowledge. You understand the product so well that you can no longer see what consumers actually need.
People in the dry-cell battery business handle manganese dioxide and potassium hydroxide every day; they know the formulas, the processes, and the shelf life inside out. But grab any consumer and ask: how long have those batteries in your drawer been sitting there? How much charge is left? Can they still be used? You’ll get a blank stare. Every time they want to use one, they agonize over it — is it still good? Has it expired? Throwing it away feels wasteful, using it risks a dead battery, so it just keeps sitting there.
The production date is printed on the bottom of the battery in ant-sized type. Why on earth should an ordinary consumer crouch down to study your production date?
This is the most typical symptom of the curse of knowledge: the industry insider thinks “does this even need saying?”, while the consumer never realizes it’s a problem at all — yet it genuinely bothers them. The insider knows an alkaline battery loses only thirty to forty percent of its charge after three years in storage and is perfectly usable. The consumer doesn’t know that. What they see is a cold, mute battery, with no information telling them whether it still works.
The more expert you are, the more these things feel “not worth mentioning.” And it is precisely these “not worth mentioning” little things that make up consumers’ real usage scenarios.
In the age of consumption saturation, functional needs have been met and the pain points are already covered by incumbent brands. Where else can you find new growth opportunities?
The answer lies elsewhere: make explicit the pain points consumers live with daily without noticing, crack open the black box just a little, and let consumers “suddenly realize” that this feature has something to do with them.
1. Pain, Fear, Delight, Itch: The Further Consumers Trade Up, the More “Fear” Drives Purchases Over “Pain”
To find new reasons to buy, you first have to get one question straight: why do consumers buy things?
Break consumer purchase motivation apart and you get four dimensions: pain, fear, delight, and itch.
Pain is discomfort the consumer clearly perceives. Batteries that don’t last, a remote control that dies after two days — that’s pain. Nanfu, China’s dominant alkaline-battery brand, built itself on pain — “Energy Ring, bigger capacity,” one line that solves your pain point. But the problem with pain points is that everyone targets them; whatever you could say, someone has already said.
Delight is emotional value. A pair of limited-edition sneakers, a co-branded watch — what you’re buying isn’t function, it’s identity, it’s social currency. But a utilitarian product like a dry-cell battery can’t deliver delight.
Itch is the extra layer of gratification. You only needed a bottle of water to quench your thirst, yet you insist on Evian, because the bottle looks good and posting it on WeChat Moments earns you face. Also not something a utilitarian product can do.
So for a tool-type product like the dry-cell battery, only two dimensions are truly available: pain and fear.
The pain point is already taken by Nanfu. And the fear point? Nobody is targeting it.
Fear is the hidden dread that consumers never explicitly express but genuinely feel. Ask them what they’re afraid of and they can’t tell you. But watch their behavior closely: while the baby plays with a toy, they instinctively check the battery compartment, afraid the child might pry the batteries out and chew on them; when the smart lock warns of low battery, they rush to swap in new ones, afraid of one day not being able to get back into their home; when the gas stove won’t ignite, they press the igniter again and again, muttering to themselves that maybe the battery is failing.
Not one brand is solving these fears.
Nanfu tells you “more power,” but doesn’t tell you “your child won’t be poisoned if they chew on it.” Xiaomi tells you “the colors look great,” but doesn’t tell you “the door lock won’t suddenly cut out at low battery.” Shuanglu (Double Deer), another Chinese battery maker, produces dedicated batteries for gas meters, but never tells consumers “here’s how to know whether those batteries in your drawer are still usable.”
The further consumers trade up, the more “fear” drives purchases over “pain” — and the more willingly people pay a premium for it. Because pain is rational: you know where it hurts, and you want a solution. Fear is irrational: you may not be able to say what you’re afraid of, but once someone makes your fear explicit and tells you “I’ve solved it for you,” you’ll pay extra for that peace of mind.
Taranis, a premium Chinese children’s footwear brand, built its anti-slip shoes on the “fear of falling.” A pair of kids’ shoes sells for eight or nine hundred yuan — over a hundred US dollars. On what grounds? Simply that moms are afraid their child will take a tumble mid-run. Once that fear was made explicit, the price stopped being a problem.
Dry-cell batteries are the same. Could a baby chewing on a battery get heavy-metal poisoning? Could a door lock’s battery die suddenly and leave you locked outside? Once these fears are made explicit, consumers will pay for “peace of mind.”
2. Scenario Slicing: Don’t Sell “a Battery” — Sell “One Specific Fear”
Having found the dimension of fear, the next question is: where do fear points come from?
Not from sitting in an office thinking them up. They are sliced out of consumers’ actual usage scenarios.
What is scenario slicing? It means not selling the dry-cell battery as “one universal battery” to everyone, but breaking it into concrete usage scenarios, each mapped to one specific fear:
The children’s-toy scenario — moms fear the baby will pry the battery out and chew on it. Bite-proof safety, no heavy-metal hazard: that’s the reason to buy. Name it the “Mom’s Peace-of-Mind Battery,” and a single phrase makes the fear explicit.
The smart-lock scenario — consumers fear coming home one day to a dead lock that won’t open. Ultra-low-power endurance and an early warning before the charge runs out: that’s the reason to buy.
The gas-stove scenario — the burner won’t light, and what’s needed is an instant burst of high current. High burst power, graphene superconduction: that’s the reason to buy.
The idle-storage scenario — nobody knows how long those batteries in the drawer have been sitting there or whether they still work. A color-changing spectrum label that tracks self-discharge decay, shading from deep green through yellow to red so remaining charge is visible at a glance: that’s the reason to buy.
Four scenarios, four fears, four reasons to buy. Each is a pain point consumers live with daily without noticing, each has a clearly defined usage context, and each can support a differentiated product.
This is the core of the scenario-slicing method: your job is to take a generic product’s usage occasions apart, find in each scenario the fear consumers “can’t articulate but genuinely feel,” then make that fear explicit and turn it into a reason to buy.
This method isn’t limited to dry-cell batteries. The consumer-goods industry is full of pain points people live with daily without noticing.
Hotel soap, whose wrapper simply refuses to tear open — especially with wet hands. Ask consumers if they have any complaints and they’ll say no. But watch them wash their hands and you’ll see them wrestling the wrapper into a soggy mess. That’s a pain point everyone has grown numb to.
The rice-cooker paddle: where do you put it after use? Inside the cooker, and the lid won’t close; on the table, and you worry it’s unhygienic. Such a small thing, yet nearly every household goes through it. Ask a rice-cooker manufacturer whether they’ve thought about this problem, and they’ll say: what’s there to solve?
A birthday cake that comes with three matches and a small striker strip glued to the box. That one small design choice solves the scramble to find a lighter when it’s time to light the candles. The cake maker never treated it as a selling point, but whoever uses it feels a flicker of warmth.
What do these cases have in common? They are all things industry insiders consider “not worth mentioning.” Yet consumers have been bothered by these little things for ten, twenty years, and no one has ever solved them.
The pain points are right there — just hidden behind the curse of knowledge.
3. Analogies: Translating Technical Language into the Language of Felt Experience
Once you’ve found the reason to buy, the next question is: how do you deliver it to consumers?
Get this step wrong, and everything before it is wasted.
Tianneng, a major Chinese battery manufacturer, wants to launch an ultra-long-endurance battery. How does the technical language go? “Optimized zinc-paste formula, added conductive auxiliaries, improved discharge-plateau stability” — that’s engineer-speak. Consumers hear it and stare blankly; you might as well have said nothing.
Try another way of saying it: the Tianneng Marathon Endurance Battery.
Five characters in Chinese, and consumers get it instantly. A marathon — stamina, endurance, going the distance. You don’t need to explain a single technical parameter; consumers fill in the concept of “ultra-long endurance” on their own.
That is what an analogy does.
What is the essence of an analogy? It translates technical language into the language of felt experience. Engineers speak in parameters; consumers speak in sensations. Between them stands a wall that needs translating across, and the analogy is the ladder over that wall.
“Large capacity” is technical language; it leaves consumers cold. Hear “large capacity” and no picture forms in your mind. “Marathon” is felt language; your mind immediately conjures a runner striding down the course. Imagery is communication efficiency. Communication efficiency is conversion rate.
Why is “Mom’s Peace-of-Mind Battery” a good name? Because “peace of mind” is a felt state. The moment a mom hears “peace of mind,” what surfaces in her head is the scene of her child playing safely — the scene where she no longer has to worry about the baby chewing on a battery. You don’t need to walk her through heavy-metal test reports or safety-standard certifications; “peace of mind” does it all.
Why is “Super Burst Battery” a good name? Because “burst” is a felt sensation. When the gas stove won’t light, what the consumer wants is that instant of explosive power. Explain graphene superconduction technology and they won’t understand. Say “super burst” and they immediately know: this battery ignites hard.
Why is the color-changing spectrum label a good design? Because “the color turning red” is a felt signal. Consumers don’t need to know the self-discharge rate or the annual percentage loss of an alkaline cell; they only need one glance at the color: green means usable, yellow means it’s getting close, red means replace it. One look, zero cognitive cost.
What do these cases have in common? Each translates a technical parameter into an image consumers can perceive directly.
Xiaomi’s “304 stainless steel” is another good analogy. 304 is a steel grade designation that consumers know nothing about. But Xiaomi doesn’t say “06Cr19Ni10” (the Chinese grade code); it says “austenitic 304 stainless steel,” then showcases the manufacturing journey — 40 production stages, 193 process steps — and consumers immediately get it: this thing is solid. A technical parameter becomes a felt perception.
So the analogy, simple as it looks, is in fact the hardest step in the whole methodology. Hard where? Hard because you have to understand two things at once: you have to understand the product, and you have to understand the consumer. You have to know the product’s technical parameters, and you also have to know which words will light up in the consumer’s mind.
Industry insiders understand the product but not the consumer. Ad agencies understand the consumer but not the product. Only someone who can bridge both sides can truly construct a reason to buy.
4. Lock Onto a Group and Punch Through: The Power of Recommendation Has Shifted from Channels to Content
The reason to buy has been found, and it has been translated into language consumers can understand. The next question: how do you get it in front of them?
The traditional approach is channel push. Give distributors higher margins so they push the product; distributors push it to retailers, retailers push it to consumers. That logic worked for the past twenty years. The Chinese market is far too vast for a brand to cover on its own; it has to rely on distributors, and to motivate distributors it has to hand over profit. Once the price structure falls into disorder, the chain breaks. That’s why veteran salespeople all know: the price structure is the line between life and death.
But in the age of consumption saturation, that logic has stopped working.
Why? Because the way consumers decide what to buy has changed.
In the past, a consumer walked into a corner shop for batteries and took whatever the owner handed over. If the owner recommended Nanfu, they bought Nanfu. The power of recommendation sat in the shop owner’s hands. So brands ceded margin to distributors, distributors got retailers to push harder, retailers pushed more and consumers bought more. The chain held together.
And today? Before buying a battery, a consumer may already have searched Xiaohongshu (RedNote, China’s leading lifestyle-recommendation platform) for “which battery is safe for children’s toys,” read three recommendation posts from other moms, and settled on an answer. They walk into the shop and ask for that brand by name. The owner recommends something else; they refuse. The power of recommendation has shifted from the channel side to the content side.
What does that mean? However high a margin you give distributors, however hard they push, consumers won’t bite. Because consumers’ minds have already been captured by the content side. Without a clear reason to buy, without brand momentum on the content side, no amount of channel coverage will move the product.
What Tianneng is doing now is the classic old road: ceding higher channel margins to distributors in the hope that they’ll push harder. But in a saturated market, that strategy has limited effect. Dry-cell batteries are a tiny slice of a distributor’s overall business; give them the highest margin you like — if sell-through is slow, they won’t truly put their heart into it. Without brand momentum, no distributor will stake their own credibility on pushing something consumers don’t recognize.
So for a new brand to gain volume, it must first do consumer education on the demand side, build a clear reason to buy and brand momentum, and then turn around and lever the channel. The sequence has reversed.
The old road is closed. What does the new road look like?
Lock onto a core group, focus on high-momentum content platforms, and punch through with precision.
Don’t blanket every channel with ads. You can’t afford it, and it wouldn’t work anyway. Find the group that hurts the most, and cut through them with the sharpest content. Take the “Mom’s Peace-of-Mind Battery”: its core group is moms. Focus on Xiaohongshu, build scenario-based recommendation content around the fear of “the baby chewing on a battery,” and punch through the mom demographic. Once moms form the perception, they walk into stores asking for this brand — and the channel naturally follows.
Locking onto a group and punching through is not just a channel-strategy question; it pulls in a pricing question too: in a saturated market, sell expensive, not cheap.
Many people assume a new brand entering a saturated market should grab share with low prices. Wrong. Consumers are not price-sensitive about utilitarian products. You’re buying one battery: Nanfu costs 2.5 yuan, another brand costs 2. Would you care about that half yuan — a few US cents? No. What you care about is whether this battery solves your problem.
What consumers want is to feel they got a bargain, not for the product to actually be cheap.
Feeling like a bargain means: you give me a clear reason to buy — “bite-proof safety,” “ultra-long endurance,” “visible charge level” — I judge it worth it, and I’m willing to pay more. Actually cheap means: your price is lower, but I don’t know why I should buy you. So I’ll just keep buying Nanfu, because Nanfu, at least, I recognize.
So the Tianneng Marathon Endurance Battery should be priced above Nanfu, on a premium track. Because what you’re selling isn’t “a battery”; you’re selling the reassurance of “ultra-long endurance — ten years in your door lock without a change.” Consumers are willing to pay a premium for that reassurance.
Summary
Looking back, the whole logic comes down to four steps:
Step one, break the curse of knowledge. Don’t assume that because you know it all, there’s no demand left. The more something strikes you as “not worth mentioning,” the more likely it is a pain point consumers live with daily without noticing.
Step two, slice scenarios to find fear points. Break the generic product into concrete scenarios; in each one, find the fear consumers can’t articulate but genuinely feel; make that fear explicit and turn it into a reason to buy.
Step three, translate with analogies. Turn technical language into the language of felt experience, so consumers grasp in one second exactly which problem of theirs you are solving.
Step four, lock onto a group and punch through. Find the group that hurts the most, focus on high-momentum content platforms for a targeted breakthrough, build brand momentum, and then lever the channel.
In the age of consumption saturation, functional needs have been met and pain points have been covered. The new growth opportunities are not in the laboratory — they are in consumers’ drawers, kitchens, and toy boxes.
But finding these pain points requires a scarce ability: you have to understand both the product and the consumer. Industry insiders understand the product but not the consumer. Ad agencies understand the consumer but not the product. Only someone who can bridge both sides can truly construct a reason to buy.
So breaking the curse of knowledge is, at bottom, not a question of methodology but a question of perspective. You have to be willing to crouch down and look up from inside the consumer’s drawer, rather than looking down from the laboratory.