Here is an interesting video of a child having ice cream for the first time.
Notice how quickly you see the smile on the face. Here is another video of a child having brocolli.
You can bet that the sub concious brain of those childen even when they become an adult would prefer ice-cream over brocolli. It is possible to train your brain to choose over brocolli over ice-cream but it going to be a somewhat difficult task that requires practice.
Let's discuss products now.
Cigarettes contain nicotine and it has got to be the fastest acting drug. For a person who has never smoked, the smell and the smoke is highly off-putting when they smoke their first cigarette. They have to learn to overcome his hurdle to get their nicotine hit. Once they are hooked to nicotine and comfortable with the taste and smell, cigarette companies own their money for life. For an ex-smoker, it only takes one puff to take up smoking again. It requires an intense effort and the right kind of knowledge to quit smoking. In fact, when COVID happened people didn't want to pay rents and moved back to their home town, but they still smoked. This insight was my "margin of safety" in my ITC investment and I could take a lot of leverage on that bet.
On the other end of the spectrum, let's discuss protein powder. What happens if you take protein powder and never work out? You are not going to see muscles. What happens when you work out for 6 months but you don't take protein powder? You would still see some kind of muscles. When you take protein powder and you regularly workout, now you start seeing a lot more muscle now. I would say the response cycle is longer and more convoluted.
Insurance products on the other hand require you to pay money upfront as premiums on a policy so that you can get claims when certain events occur. Now those events might not happen for a long time if they ever happen. You would still hope that those negative events don't happen. So, why do people buy this? Well, they might have observed someone who was saved from a large payment when some negative event occurred and thus they now see the importance of it. I bet it took insurance industry a long time to convince people of this product. Currently it's one of the largest industries.
If you carefully noticed, I took three very different examples. One with very quick response cycle and an extremely big market, one with a medium response cycle and a fast growing market, and one with a slow response cycle with an extremely big market. I believe it's extremely crucial to understand response cycle of each product i.e. when does the product start showing it's advantages. A simplistic view would be that shorter the response cycle, the better. A more complete view would be that understanding the response cycle allows you to decide your go-to-market. Also, you should try to reduce as much as possible and make the onboarding better. For e.g. you can still make buying insurance and claim processes faster and less hassle free even though insurance's response cycle is significantly longer.