Now, businesses are racking their brains to think about how to maximize profits, such as increasing commodity prices, reducing costs, etc. However, the more they want to hollow out the pockets of consumers, the more consumers will tighten their pockets and start businesses. The game of cats and mice, the merchants consume a lot of marketing costs in this process, but the benefits are not ideal. Because the consumer looks at the greedy face of the business, natural instinct to produce defensive mentality, how can it easily open the wallet. This time, the "cat" like businesses can not stop and change ideas, take out a piece of cake on the feet, leisurely wait for the "puppies" themselves to come to the door. This so-called cake is free.

Scientists conducted a survey experiment and investigated 300 low-income earners and 300 high-income earners who purchased goods from supermarkets. They found that low-income earners did not choose only cheaper products. They would select the desired products, including many high-quality and high-priced products. Practical goods; and the goods purchased by high-income earners are not as high-end as they are supposed to be. Although there are a lot of high-end products, they also include many free products that are pre-placed by discounted products and experimental personnel. .

This experiment allows us to understand that what everyone likes to be free is not only the human nature of love and covetousness, but also has two factors that affect consumers. One is the instinct for self-protection. Compared to merchants, consumers are always in a weak position of information asymmetry in shopping, so the risk of consumption is very high, and free trials reduce the risk of consumers, so that they can try to contact the product, and then bring To sell. Supermarkets and shopping malls often engage in activities such as giving away freebies and try-outs. Most customers receive gifts immediately and they leave immediately. It seems that businesses are losing money. In fact, businesses that engage in such promotions can increase sales by around 8% per day. The potential for continued purchases may be greater.

Another factor that makes consumers like free products is value-cognitive thinking. When we are shopping, the price of commodities is the second factor to think about, and the first thing to think about is that this value is not worth buying, which is the measure of the value of the commodity. After comparison, it is considered that the most valuable products will be selected by consumers rather than the most expensive or cheapest products. Because, even if you are rich, no one wants to be treated as a “big head”. The more rich people are, the better they are at calculating the value of goods, and the lower-income people are more concerned about the value of the goods. As a result, both will go first. Measuring the value of a commodity, free of charge, is undoubtedly of absolute value.

Lao Tzu mentioned in The Tao Te Ching: "The idea is that the more people there are, the more people they have to be with them." This willingness to bear is worthy of consideration by today's businessmen. Peter Drucker, a master of management, believes that the value of an enterprise exists to create value for customers. In fact, the fact is that when companies do this, creating value for customers, companies are beginning to become valuable. Similarly, when you're not thinking hard about how to hollow out the pockets of consumers, but instead consider how to stuff the consumer's pockets, wonderful things happen - consumers begin to fill your pocket with real money. . As a business, you can use the best means of giving - free, the most powerful leverage in this market, will inevitably shake the boulder in front of the consumer torrent.

The most successful free marketing model and the initial profitability model is in the Internet field. Businesses on the Internet have also gained high profits by freeing up viewers. For example, on the Internet, tens of thousands of software can be downloaded. Many excellent software may have more than ten million downloads, but users who pay for software only account for 0.5% or less of all users, but even so, Providers can also rely on these 0.5 paid subscribers to get a huge profit while satisfying 100% of users. Because the network and digitization can make the cost of the business to a very low, in a sense, its marginal benefit is an increasing form.

Just think, if we can transplant the free mode of the network to the offline physical market, will it also bring amazing popularity and a lot of sales? The answer is yes. However, the reason why the Internet can be free is that digital products can be copied indefinitely for free and the marginal cost is almost zero, which is exactly the opposite of the offline entity market. For example, a software company online provides users with 10,000 trials of software through the Internet. Its cost is only the initial part of the development, but the more free physical goods under the line, the more the cost will increase. Therefore, this is also a factor that companies must consider.