Whether you're a product manager, marketer, or business owner, you'll definitely want to see this presentation, "Happiness as Your Business Model", by Tara Hunt from the 2008 Think Digital conference in NewcastleGateshead, UK.

"Happiness as Your Business Model" tells us that people or consumers are:

• inefficient
• upredictable
• motivated by what makes him/her happy
• ignores marketing messages where possible and rails against marketing messages that annoy
• will sometimes cut off his/her nose off to spite his/her face
• buys crap that makes no sense whatsoever, like those big foam fingers for $10 at sports games

Also the presentation reminds us the values of a happy customer by listing out "7 reasons that happiness is the key to success":

1. happy customers talk to more people about their positive experiences
2. unhappy customers talk to the MOST people about their negative experiences
3. happy customers are repeat customers
4. happy customers will pay more for an awesome experience
5. happy customers are loyal
6. happy customers will drive your marketing for you
7. happy employees are more productive, creative and loyal

So how do we make our customers happy?

The presentations lays out 4 "pillars of happiness":

• Give the customer a sense of autonomy: Empowerment and freedom of choice
• Make the customer feel competent: A sense of achievement
• Make it easy for the customer to interact and feel apart of the community: relatedness
• Improve the customer's self-esteem: Make them feel good about themselves

The presentation goes on to show pitfalls to avoid, ways to strengthen the 4 pillars of happiness, and provide real world examples that exemplify these principles (e.g Zappos, Twitter, Wordpress)

side note: Don't be intimidated by the number of slides. It goes fast, trust me.