In actual combat, product operators often face the following problems: high unit price and low frequency; The basic products of old products have been in operation for many years, and it is urgent to find new growth points; The original product line is complicated and bloated, and there is room for re-disassembly, sales and operation. The author first introduces the definition of complementary products, and then expects to give some inspiration to product operators through seven cases of complementary products. Definition of complementary products Complementary products refer to goods that are consumed together in a certain proportion. For example, glasses and eyeglasses, substitutes and supplements are a pair of relative concepts, so how do substitutes and supplements affect each other's price and demand? Let's look at the following two demand curves: Assuming that the price and demand of Xiaomi mobile phone are as shown in D1, if the price of Huawei mobile phone drops sharply, many users will think that since they are all domestic mobile phones, replacing Xiaomi mobile phone with Huawei mobile phone can greatly reduce the purchase expenses. Why not? Therefore, even if the price of Xiaomi mobile phone remains unchanged, the demand will also decline. This causes the curve D1 to move in parallel to D2. Suppose that the price and demand of air purifier filter element are as shown in D1. If the retailer promotes the air purifier host by reducing the price, it will cause some users who originally did not plan to buy the air purifier host to buy the air purifier host with the mentality of bargain hunting. In this way, users who buy the air purifier host will probably buy some air purifier filters by the way. Therefore, even if the filter element of the air purifier has not changed, the price reduction of the main engine of the air purifier still increases the sales volume of the filter element of the air purifier, resulting in a parallel shift of the demand curve from D1 to D2. In product strategy, the so-called complementary effect is that in order to improve the user's view of the basic product with the main position, the expected effect can often be achieved by promoting the complementary product with the auxiliary position. Then product operators must understand the corresponding relationship between basic products and complementary products. Carefully identify complementary products that are important to the basic products. The essence of product strategy relationship between basic products and complementary products depends largely on users' views and consumers' cognition. Generally speaking, basic products and complementary products are interrelated. It is often a glory and a loss. They influence each other, and * * * together determine the market image of this product combination and the overall cognition of users. Complementary effect will change with the change of market demand, and different synergistic effects will occur in different industrial cycles and different industrial structures. See the following successful cases of complementary effect. Case 1: Splitting Strategy of Razor and Blade More than 1 years ago, Kim Gillette, the founder of Gillette Company, found that if a set of products consisting of a knife rest and multiple blades were sold in the traditional way, the overall price was often too high for customers to bear, resulting in poor sales. So Kim Gillette tried to sell the suit separately. Moreover, the price of the elegant and durable Gillette tool rest is set at a very low level. Moreover, the price of 55 cents is far lower than the cost of Gillette tool holder of 2.5 dollars, but the investment in purchasing the tool holder for the first time is relatively low. Then users will be more and more widely accepted. Therefore, the number of users of Gillette razors has increased significantly, and we can all immediately respond to the user who uses Gillette razors, and he must constantly replace Gillette blades. Then Geely can raise the price of Gillette blades and sell the blades with a cost of only 1 cent to 5 cents. Then the continuous income from the blade not only makes up for the loss of the initial sale of the tool holder, but also obviously improves the overall profit. In fact, more importantly, this pricing strategy of splitting product matrix has helped Gillette monopolize the razor market for a long time. After Gillette razor, this pricing model of Gillette razor was later learned and applied by many companies. We found that this product portfolio can be divided into a basic product and a complementary product. Moreover, this complementary product is the time for consumables and subsequent continuous service. Whether it is printers and ink cartridges, optical cameras and films, game machines and corresponding game software, elevators and elevator maintenance services, software and software upgrade services, water purifiers and water treatment services, etc. Many products are successful with this pricing model. This pricing model, also called "razor and blade strategy" by the market, sells the basic products at the cost price, even at a price far below the cost, with the purpose of urging users to buy more complementary products with higher profits in the future. Once the basic product drives the complementary product, that is to say, a single razor drives the blade, the profit will roll in, and the blade can become the main profit source of the company. The key is that the blade not only needs to be reused, but also is difficult to be replaced by other companies' products because of patent problems. Case 2: green mountain coffee Company, a coffee company selling capsules, is a company that develops the razor and blade strategy. Green mountain coffee Company was founded in the United States in 1981. It was listed on NASDAQ in 1993. If Starbucks sells feelings. Green Mountain sells cups. The founder of green mountain coffee has a famous saying: Why make a pot of coffee at a time? I only have one drink at a time. This idea prompted them to invent an important product: K-cup capsule K-cup, which only makes one cup of coffee at a time. The so-called k cup is also called coffee capsule. Is a unique patent in green mountain coffee. A container that looks like a paper cup has a smaller paper cup-shaped osmotic device inside, which can only permeate liquid. It can greatly preserve the fragrance of coffee and is favored by people. Matching with this K-cup capsule, green mountain coffee Company has developed a special Kriging coffee machine. Put K capsules in this coffee machine and a cup of fragrant coffee will appear in front of you in one minute. And there is no need to grind coffee beans, weigh them and clean them. There is no residue at the bottom of the cup, so just make one cup at a time. The Krieger coffee machine produced by Green Mountain costs about $1 each, which is a cost price and even a slight loss. However, once consumers spend $1 to buy a Krieger coffee machine, they will keep buying K cups of coffee capsules, and green mountain coffee Company has applied for a number of patents related to K cups of coffee capsules, which are open to all beverage manufacturers. Allow other coffee, tea, hot cocoa and other beverage vendors. Produce such a K-cup capsule and use it on Krieger coffee machine in Green Mountain. These companies only need to pay Green Mountain Company a royalty of 6 cents per cup. In fact, even the famous Starbucks has launched such a Starbucks coffee capsule. After consumers bought the coffee machine in Green Mountain at a low price. Not only will you buy its original K-cup coffee capsules, but you will also buy K-cup capsules in the form of tea and hot cocoa from other beverage manufacturers, and even K-cup capsules from Starbucks. The synergy brought by this complementary product operation method is that almost 3 million K capsules are consumed every day in American homes and offices. Green mountain coffee further developed the product strategy of razor and blade. In fact, a so-called razor is compatible with more types of so-called blades. It is the Krieger coffee machine specially made by it to be compatible with different types of K-cup capsules from different beverage manufacturers, which occupies more market space, and then charges other K-cup capsules through patent authorization, which is the so-called product strategy of lying down to make money. Case 3: reverse innovation and application of complementary strategy: Apple Ipod and iTunes Apple iPod and iTunes are business cases that maximize the complementary effect. Apple introduced the ipod in 21. Almost every product operator remembers Steve Jobs' famous advertisement at this famous press conference: "Put 1 songs in your pocket!" . Up to now, the aftertaste is extremely cool. In fact, the early mp3 player can only store one hour of music, while the first Ipod can store 1, songs. But what really pushes the iPod to the peak is the complementary product behind it, namely iTunes. Although most competitors can compete with iPod products through hard work, when Apple's iTunes goes online, Other competitors find themselves at a great disadvantage. Apple has itunes desktop software that synchronizes ipod and computer, and iTunes stores that can download genuine music cheaply, especially this iTunes store. He was the first legal website to pay for each song and download it. Users only need to pay 99 cents for each song. These songs come from five major record companies and thousands of independent musicians. Each song is charged 99 cents, 7 cents is distributed to the record company that owns the copyright of the song, and 2 cents is distributed to the credit card issuer that handles the payment. Although Apple is responsible for the operation and maintenance of the website and other indirect costs. But it only leaves about 9 cents per song. Although you can't make a direct profit from iTunes, iTunes has quickly become an extremely effective complement to support the basic product of Ipod. Within three days of launching iTunes music download service, computer users downloaded 1 million copies of iTunes desktop software. And paid for more than 1 million songs. As a consumer, I definitely love to choose freely among many songs and then download them online in time. And the price is so low. Only 99 cents can get your favorite song. ITunes has become the largest music store in the world. After the launch of iTunes, it had an extremely amazing impact on the sales of iPods. Before the launch of iTunes, Apple sold an average of 113, iPods every quarter. After the launch of iTunes, the quarterly sales of iPods soared to 733,. The Ipod finally occupied 7% of the mp3 market in the United States, and Apple really embarked on the road of hacker-level explosive growth. In essence, the complementary effect created by Jobs is a business model that is contrary to the traditional razor blade strategy, that is, selling cheap blades to promote the sales of razors. The key point is that the blades of other people's homes are sold here, and songs from five major record companies, and users download a favorite music after selection, only need .99 US dollars, but what about pulling their own so-called razors? An iPod product costs at least $399, and the products at each price point are often $5 to $1 higher than its competitors, but its market share is as high as 7%. Case 4: Low-frequency breakthrough complementary product strategy: IKEA and IKEA restaurant are the largest furniture suppliers in the world, with 1 billion customers coming every year. When we mention IKEA, we will not only think of simple and natural furniture in Nordic style, but also unconsciously think of IKEA restaurant and the food monopoly store outside his checkout area. Users who have been to IKEA restaurants have an impression. Ikea's beef balls and ice cream are the treasures of the town store. Meatball is a special food in Sweden, but IKEA has developed a variety of products such as vegetable meatballs and chicken meatballs for consumers in different regions, so that today's consumers prefer to call it IKEA meatballs rather than Swedish meatballs. The reason why ice cream has become a marketing tool for a restaurant. The key point is that the cheapest ice cream on the market costs only one yuan on weekdays and only two yuan on weekends. In essence, IKEA is not blindly opening a restaurant without making money. There is a generalized complementary effect between IKEA restaurant and IKEA furniture. We all have this understanding. Furniture cities are usually located in remote places from the city center for the simple reason that the rent is cheap, and IKEA is no exception. For example, in Beicai, Shanghai, because of the low rent, IKEA can have a larger range of furniture and provide free parking, but it is far from the city center. The surrounding supporting facilities are definitely not perfect. On the other hand, shopping for furniture is very time-consuming, and everyone is likely to have the feeling of buying furniture with an empty stomach. The founder of IKEA put forward at the beginning of doing business: hungry can't promote good business, and IKEA restaurant meets the needs of users at this specific time and place. Moreover, the consumption frequency of furniture is low. How can we attract customers to visit IKEA more frequently? In users' minds, IKEA restaurant has still become an influential chain restaurant, and with the addition of food monopoly stores, about one-third of customers come to IKEA for dinner and visit IKEA by the way. Careful customers will also find that the design of IKEA users' moving lines is very distinctive. Generally, users will be guided to walk through a shopping route of IKEA from the parking lot before reaching the IKEA restaurant! During this walk, users will be unconsciously attracted by the goods along the way, stop to appreciate and choose IKEA furniture, and shopping desire and willingness to pay will naturally form. From the user's demand, IKEA ingeniously associates furniture and catering that seem to have no direct dependence. This product strategy of driving the original low-frequency furniture business with high-frequency catering business is the complementary effect, which is reflected in the fact that IKEA restaurants and food stores not only solve the discomfort of customers buying furniture hungry, but also provide value-added experience and attract customers to patronize frequently. Through the high-frequency consumption such as catering, the furniture consumption with relatively low frequency is driven, and we seem to find the so-called counter-example of doing nothing from IKEA. Sometimes the more distinctive and attractive the sideline is, the more successful the main business associated with it will be. Case 5: Low-priced traffic and high-priced value-added: Alibaba's basic services and value-added services all know that everyone can open a shop at first, and there is no need to pay fees. But when Taobao has today's data volume, it not only charges the service fee for the technical classification of basic products, but also develops more value-added product charging modules, such as clean out treasure to train, Diamond Exhibition, banner advertisement, Ali Mom advertisement, word of mouth and so on. So it is no exaggeration to say that Alibaba's start is also a classic masterpiece of razor and blade application. On the one hand, Alibaba's basic products attracted merchants to settle in for free, which hit competing ebay and accumulated its own traffic pool. When users and customers reached a certain volume, they began to sell value-added product matrices. Case 6: Split bloated products: In the restaurants in the air, we can often realize that in the fiercely competitive aviation industry, aviation catering service is an auxiliary function, so in the overall operation of airlines, it is generally in a weak position. In the past, we often complained that aviation meals were unpalatable and there was no explanation channel for why they were unpalatable, but in the past year, we found that many improvements in aviation catering had become a common phenomenon. For example, Sichuan Airlines' Laoganma, brown sugar steamed buns and baked potatoes are very popular, Xiamen Airlines orders food online, and even in economy class, there are almost ten kinds of special meals for online selection in advance, while Hainan Airlines specially provides yellow hot sauce, which fully demonstrates the local characteristics of Hainan Airlines. In the past year, we often saw friends waiting at the airport send photos of shredded pork noodles with cabbage, spicy meat noodles and noodles of China Eastern Airlines in WeChat circle of friends. Further analysis of aviation catering. By communicating with senior professionals, you will find that flight catering is actually extremely complicated. The complexity of aviation catering is reflected in the following aspects: firstly, time is limited, because food is not easy to be stored within 24 hours, which requires an efficient cold chain logistics system; Secondly, the requirements of food hygiene and safety on the plane are more stringent and even harsh; Once again, we must face the uncertainty of demand, because each