What Will People Pay For?

Dan Bricklin wrote a great essay here called What Will People Pay For? which he pointed me to as I'm writing about social software for the upcoming BLOGON at the Haas School of Business at Berkeley on July 22-23. Check it out. Here's a sample:

People like to interact with people they care about. The interactions are often simple, but personally important. They are willing to pay money for this. That's why they pay for cellphones, for Internet access, and for postcards and postage, and for souvenirs. It gives them emotional satisfaction. They pay money to travel to visit family and friends.

I get an image in my head when I see people on the street having these simple interactions on the phone. It's that image of primates sitting next to each other grooming one another. Simple, kind interactions with the ones close to us are innate.

People also pay money for other forms of emotion that aren't through other people directly: listening to music, watching movies (usually with other people -- doing it alone with TV they won't pay for), seeing something beautiful or interesting.

Buying isn't fun. Shopping is. Shopping is looking at things and imagining owning them or wearing them or using them. Shopping is looking for "just the right thing" out of many possibilities. Shopping is often around or with other people. People pay money to shop in interesting places, even if they don't buy much: Traveling to New York City to walk down 5th Avenue and look in at Tiffany's, Steuben Glass (until they moved), and FAO Schwartz; going to Italy to look at the stores with the designer clothes; buffets; etc.

So, people will pay money for things that give them emotional satisfaction, especially those things that involve interacting with others, or have a high emotion content, like music.