Duan Yongping spent 11.7 billion: He heavily invested in a company dismissed by the internet as a scam. Why do young people line up, enter lotteries, and even pay several times the price for a pile of plastic figurines with little practical value? The answer lies in something Wang Ning explained years ago about faucets and fountains: Imagine you’re already China’s richest person—money is just a number to you. You forget to turn off the faucet at home, and water keeps running; even if you waste only a few dozen yuan a day, you still feel uneasy. But your front-yard fountain consumes hundreds of yuan in water daily—even if no guests are around—you likely won’t feel it’s wasteful. Both are water. Why do the feelings differ so much? Because the water from the faucet is utilitarian consumption—measured by usefulness, value for money, and whether it’s wasted. The water in the fountain is emotional consumption—measured by beauty, comfort, and the emotional value it provides. Wang Ning once posed an even more interesting thought experiment: What if every MOLLY figurine came with a USB drive attached—same appearance, same price, essentially giving buyers a practical feature for free? Would sales increase? The answer: No. Consumers originally bought MOLLYs for surprise, collection, companionship, and emotion. But once you add a USB drive, people immediately start thinking: I already have plenty of USB drives at home—why buy another? What’s the capacity? How fast is it? Is this price worth it? A purchase that previously required no justification gets dragged back into the realm of cost-benefit analysis. You think you’ve added value—but you’ve actually increased the buyer’s sense of guilt. This is one of the most counterintuitive truths in consumer markets: People are extremely frugal in utilitarian spending, yet incredibly generous when it comes to emotional fulfillment. They’ll agonize over a few yuan in delivery fees but happily spend hundreds on a concert ticket. They’ll feel bad about a dripping faucet but willingly pay to admire a fountain. They’ll compare alcohol content and price of ordinary baijiu—but almost no one calculates the cost of alcohol in Maotai. Because Maotai doesn’t just sell liquor—it sells social connection, status, and cultural symbolism. Apple doesn’t just sell phones—it sells aesthetics, quality, and identity. Similarly, POP MART doesn’t sell plastic—it sells the anticipation of opening the box, the thrill of pulling a rare figure, and the emotions young people project onto these characters. This explains why most companies struggle so hard: They spend their entire lives fighting in the red ocean of utilitarian consumption—competing on price, specs, features, and free gifts—until their profits are sliced paper-thin. But Duan Yongping—from Xiao Ba Wang learning machines and步步高 to his later investments in Apple and Maotai—has repeatedly proven one consistent truth: Don’t just listen to what users say they need; observe what they’re truly willing to pay for. The same applied to Xiao Ba Wang and步步高: Apple is first and foremost a great phone—but far more than just a phone. Maotai is first and foremost great liquor—but its hidden value extends far beyond the liquid inside. The most common mistake companies make is feeling compelled to add practical features to emotional products, believing more features equal better value and greater consumer appeal. But sometimes, every extra feature pulls the product out of the emotional account and drags it back into the utilitarian one. Once consumers start comparing specs, prices, and cost-effectiveness, the brand’s premium begins to vanish. That’s why POP MART’s greatest strength isn’t just its IP design—it’s that it understands exactly what it’s selling. It never tries to prove that a plastic figurine is useful. Instead, it turns emotion, aesthetics, collecting, and social connection into the product itself.