# Product Enhancements By:: [[Ross Jackson]] 2024-07-31 There is no accounting for taste. People like what they like. They like what they like because they like it. One set of tastes isn’t better than another. Many things influence what one likes, including culture, habit, experience, meaning creation, and physiology. Product enhancements and variations are ways to broaden the appeal of a given product (or set of products) to the broadest market possible. Coffee is an easy example. For hundreds of years, one could get a cup of coffee. Some liked the coffee black; others liked it with cream or sugar, and some liked it with cream and sugar. These were pretty much the available coffee options. People either liked coffee, or they didn’t. Coffee was relatively inexpensive and widely available. It is easy to make in large quantities and could be made and served when ordered. The product offerings have become more varied and more complex. First, the products were expanded to provide the European offerings of cappuccino and espresso. Subsequently, the offerings include things that are closer to milkshakes than they are to a cup of coffee. These offerings take substantially longer to make, are more labor intensive, and cost more. Are they good? Well, who is to say? Again, there is no accounting for taste. Some people do, others do not. Is it coffee? That’s a more interesting question. It’s like asking if a cake is sugar. Cakes have sugar in them, but it doesn’t make cakes sugar. These milkshake drinks have coffee in them; whether they are coffee is unclear. They do allow people who don’t like coffee to drink “coffee.” What makes this example interesting is that a degree of status can be associated with being a coffee drinker, and coffee is a drug. One could desire whatever social status is associated with drinking coffee or a tasty way to ingest caffeine. By expanding the product offering, more people have started drinking and consuming coffee differently. The coffee market has been expanded radically. The industry has become something it hadn’t been before. Product enhancements and variations can transform an industry. Wants are a complex mix of biological, individual, and social drives. Suppose a company can make a profitable and popular coffee drink that takes longer and costs more and sell it to people who would never drink a cup of black coffee. In that case, there is almost no limit to what a company could do regarding product enhancements and variations. The opportunity was there for anybody who sold coffee. Few ever thought or followed through on the thought of offering something different. The opportunity was there. Capitalizing on opportunity requires strategic thinking and luck. These are not independent. #### Related Items [[Coffee]] [[Products]] [[Variation]] [[Preferences]] [[Marketing]] [[Status]] [[Strategy]] [[Luck]]