A profile shows what people lack. A persona shows who they want to be
Originally written in Chinese. Translated with AI, reviewed by Gary. Read the Chinese original →
When we analyse customers, the tool we are most used to is the user profile.
Age, gender, income, job, family situation, use case. From these objective facts, we infer what this person "should" need.
Say someone owns a home but has no TV. The traditional thinking is: he must need a TV, we just haven't reached him yet.
Today I read Liang Ning's book Real Demand (《真需求》). She asks a very unusual question:
Is it possible that he simply doesn't want one?
In an era of basic needs, lacking something usually meant needing it. No fridge, you need a fridge. No washing machine, you need a washing machine.
But in an era of oversupply, many things are no longer necessities. They are elastic needs. Not having something doesn't necessarily mean you lack it. Very often, it just means you don't want it.
She argues that looking only at the user profile isn't enough.
What matters more is the user persona.
A persona is who someone believes they are, or who they want to become.
Tmall has some very interesting persona labels, like "the princess on the run", "the fussy camper", "the meticulous gym-goer" and "the humblebrag of the office pantry".
What's interesting about these labels is that they don't group people by age, income or job. They group people by how they imagine themselves.
"The princess on the run" isn't necessarily rich. She may live a very ordinary life, but she feels she can't be too ordinary. So she buys small, refined things to keep a little sense of being different.
"The fussy camper" isn't simply going camping. He wants some taste in his life even in the wild. So the canopy, the lamp, the chair and the coffee gear all become part of his persona.
That is a completely different logic from the user profile.
A user profile looks at what someone lacks. A user persona looks at who someone wants to become.
And interestingly, the more someone owns in an area, the more willing they often are to keep buying.
Someone with a wardrobe full of clothes doesn't need clothes less. It shows that clothes are how she expresses herself.
Someone with lots of camping gear doesn't need gear less. It shows camping is part of how he shapes his life.
So when building a product today, we can't only ask what users lack. We should also ask:
What kind of person does he want to prove he is?
Which version of himself is he willing to spend money on?
Especially with clothing. Clothes have never just been about covering the body. They are the most direct way people express their persona every day.
Many women buy clothes not because they truly lack one more piece, but because they want to keep a little feeling, in an ordinary life, that "I deserve to look good too".
That may be the real demand.