Welcome to the “CEO Series”. Here, we talk about how entrepreneurs learn to become great CEOs, as the greatest technology companies in history, most often than not, are led by people like them.
Painkillers cures one’s pain instantly. The pain is an urge or a cry of need to a person.
Vitamins improves one’s health condition in the long run. Taking vitamins is a habit that was formed from choice.
Weight-loss products helps one gets rid of the excessive, unwanted calories. It is an expense out of guilt.
Pain is undesirable; therefore, the need for painkillers happened naturally.
A good health condition is subjective and there aren’t many ways to measure it. Therefore, the needs for vitamins are actually generated by the market.
A lack of self-control contributes to excessive-eating and a lack of exercise. The needs for weight-loss products are strong and aggressive, and borne out of guilt.
Statistics show that the need for painkillers is extreme. The minority of people who are suffering from severe pain spent 7 billion USD on pain killers to kill their pain.
The need for vitamins shows another extreme. The minority of people who are perusing a better health condition spent approximately 7 billion USD to make them feel better.
However, the need for weight-loss products is a relative majority. Lacking self-control and the guilt of giving in to your desires happen more frequently when compared to the other two conditions mentioned above. These people spent about 60 billion USD every year on weight-loss products.
The need for painkillers is rigid but competitive.
The need for vitamins can be transformed into habit, but it take a large amount of capital and resources to educate people about their benefits.
To conclude, the scale of these two markets are the same.
However, the market for weight-loss products is almost ten times bigger than the other two markets because of the need formed from the seven deadly sins present in every human being.
So, entrepreneur, are you the painkiller, vitamin or the weight-loss product?
This article is originally written by Jamie Lin, a well-published author based in Taiwan. The article is translated from Chinese by Loh Sin Yee and is reproduced here with permission. Images were added into the article for visual purposes.
