As a Digital Product person, do you think about intrinsic and extrinsic values of your product or service? Traditional marketing has generally considered these issues from a high-level marketing and messaging perspective. But how often do you see them considered deep within the features and benefits of digital products? Not much, with the sometimes exception of gaming products and perhaps some health apps. And yet, the full User Experience (UX) that goes beyond the interface imbues our products with features that touch on one or the other or both. Game designers may deeply consider game mechanics, (rules and interactions), and dynamics, (emergent behaviors, experiences), but what about the rest of us?
The question is, when crafting products, are you considering intrinsic vs. extrinsic dimensions? At the highest level of Vision and Mission through Strategy right down to Story Creation and execution, we’re all imbuing our brands with… with… with what? The answer is likely with both intrinsic and extrinsic values; both in fact and perception. The question is: Are we doing so with intentionality.
Sometimes we can get stuck in feature factory mode and this presents a variety of risks. One is the time drain that prevents us from considering bigger picture items. Such as making sure features are truly aligned with our intended intrinsic and extrinsic values. Some of these product value dynamics might be an exercise for marketing more so than product. This can depend on company size, spans of responsibility, and the nature of cross-functional partnerships and team structures. Whomever is responsible for considering such things, it pays to execute such things properly.
Quick Basics: What are Intrinsic and Extrinsic Values?
Let’s quickly do the “from the book” definitions here to level set just in case this is a new topic for anyone…
- Intrinsic Value: Refers to the core functionality and inherent quality of a product, such as its usability, design, and innovation. It directly impacts user satisfaction and long-term engagement. Regarding personal motivational considerations, we have a large range of values: Personal enjoyment, Curiosity, Mastery, Purpose, Autonomy, Enjoyment of Flow state, Creativity, Challenge, Satisfaction, Meaning, Altruism, Self-actualization, Interests, Competence, and Financial Rewards.
- Extrinsic Value: Derived from external factors like brand perception, social proof, and economic incentives. It influences initial adoption and user perception but may not sustain long-term loyalty. On the personal motivation side, we again have a large range of motivational imperatives: Recognition, Status, Grades/Scores, Competition, Social pressure, Rewards, Punishment avoidance, Compliance, Approval, External validation (via visibly financial success, publicity or other means).
Now we’re going to think about these, within our context of digital product craft.
Think of what we’re trying to do in terms of how people might be motivated. Consider the following example. A Reddit or Quora user wants to engage with others that have similar issues. Some ask questions. Others answer questions or otherwise participate. And plenty do all of these. Mostly this seems to be from intrinsic motivation. Points and other gamified experiences may encourage desired behaviors. But what do you think would happen if the rewards became more economic in these environments? (Answer: Implemented well, it may provide a small nudge towards further engagement. But risks morphing a social contract into more of an economic one, drastically impacting behavior and trust.) Now consider just about any running exercise app, (like Strava or the Nike Run Club). They’ll of course have basic functionality to track your exercises, eating habits, and so on. And most of the time, they’ll also offer social sharing options. Which might be more motivational for some, but certainly not all. What’s the nature of such motivation? Is some of it bragging rights? Or mostly more group belonging and emotional support? Ever participate in a medical support forum? It could have some of the worst UI/UX ever, but people would still find a way to share critical information and support each other. Where and when do these things matter? That’s what you need to work out. Because things do matter. You will either consider product features, functions, benefits and design with these issues in mind with intention, or just rely on luck. Which strategy do you think has a higher likelihood of success?
It can be challenging to understand motivational imperatives given these complexities. We have psychological theories like motivational pluralism, where individuals weigh multiple, sometimes conflicting, desires (e.g., status vs. practicality) based on the situation. And similarly, situational variability, where people’s choices shift depending on their environment, emotions, or immediate needs. You can also look at Trait Activation Theory, where these traits are expressed differently depending on situational cues. For instance, a person might prioritize salary over a title in one context but choose a luxury car over a practical one in another, based on which traits the situation activates. Then we have Decision Field Theory, how preferences evolve over time and are influenced by the context of choices. (Also see: On what motivates us: a detailed review of intrinsic v. extrinsic motivation.)
The key takeaway: human behavior isn’t linear or monolithic. It’s dynamic and context-dependent.
During a User Journey creation exercise, it might be useful to capture some of the motivational imperatives along a customer’s decision path, not just general thoughts and outcomes.
Why Should You Care?
I’ll repeat my personal favorite definition of brand. “A brand is a promise made over time.” It’s not just the product or service. Or the messaging. It’s the ongoing and changing construct of what your brand is within the mind of your customer. This is more than just perception. It’s a holistic experiences with your brand at every touch point. They may align perfectly or sometimes be at war with one another. They’re there whether you try to manage them or not. Often, marketing tries to manage them through messaging. But messaging generally won’t fix the bad product or service customer experience. Whereas, a great customer service experience might very well resolve some other poor experience. Typically, (unless something truly egregious happens and your customer abandons you forever), this isn’t a one time game; especially for brands with which customers have a longer term relationship. (This can range from a consumers local supermarket to a corporations’ ERP systems, and so on.)
Regardless of what you do, your product, service, brand, etc. will take on both intrinsic and extrinsic values for customers. Quite likely not the same ones for everybody. There’s research regarding the value of active management of these attributes. (See: Investigating the relationship between intrinsic and extrinsic product attributes with customer satisfaction, An Extrinsic and Intrinsic Motivation-based Model for Measuring consumer shopping Oriented Web site success. (PDF))
Intrinsic and Extrinsic Value in Digital Products
In the context of digital platforms, value perception is going to be some mix of intrinsic functionality and extrinsic appeal. Understanding how users judge quality through these lenses might be critical for your product.
Consider Possible Intrinsic Value Drivers
These are perhaps the obvious items. The basics. What does the thing do? Is it lousy, good, great. How much pain users will take depends on their end goal. E.g., to schedule an appointment with an important healthcare system, customers will angrily tolerate a lot to complete a task. Ordering from one of the 10 restaurant delivery services? An extra second delay can lose you your customer. So intrinsic is really the basic offering. Do these features/functions satisfy and of the intrinsic motivators listed earlier?
- Core Functionality: Users expect products to work as intended. Even, (sometimes especially), non-functional requirements like speed, reliability, and usability are non-negotiable.
- Innovation: Unique features that solve problems efficiently drive long-term engagement as they can satisfy the intrinsic motivational imperatives that drive adoption and ongoing use.
- User Experience: A seamless, frictionless experience enhances intrinsic value.
- Motivational Imperatives: Which intrinsic motivations are engaged or activated?
Extrinsic Value Drivers
Here we get into more of the emotional side. The questions here become where – if at all – are you managing this within your product feature set, and how.
- Brand Reputation: A well-known, respected brand influences purchasing decisions.
- Social Proof: User reviews, influencer endorsements, and testimonials shape perception.
- Scarcity & Exclusivity: Limited editions, waitlists, and premium tiers enhance desirability. (Within reason. This probably doesn’t work for everything and there’s likely a decay factor in any case. How long will you wait for certain things? A research sample of one is hardly valid, but sometimes we should just apply common sense.)
- Motivational Imperatives: Which extrinsic motivations are enabled and trigger positive outcomes?
Balancing Intrinsic and Extrinsic Value for Digital Products
Every product and service is different. Here’s some things to consider. Let me know if you think there’s other key items that should be on this list:
- Align Incentives with User Motivations
- For example: Preserve intrinsic engagement in gamified environments. When you introduce economic incentives, consider doing so cautiously to avoid exploitation.
- For example: Preserve intrinsic engagement in gamified environments. When you introduce economic incentives, consider doing so cautiously to avoid exploitation.
- Enhance Intrinsic Value Without Over-Reliance on External Signals
- Focus on feature innovation, usability, and reliability. Messaging alone should not oversell / overshadow actual product quality. (The old idea of “show me” don’t “tell me.”) For example, Visual Studio Code’s dominance among developers exemplifies intrinsic value prioritization; albeit this is a free product. Figma arguably transformed design tools by focusing intensely on intrinsic value. Beyond letting the product experience drive adoption, they used real-time collaboration functionality that solved a genuine pain point.
- Focus on feature innovation, usability, and reliability. Messaging alone should not oversell / overshadow actual product quality. (The old idea of “show me” don’t “tell me.”) For example, Visual Studio Code’s dominance among developers exemplifies intrinsic value prioritization; albeit this is a free product. Figma arguably transformed design tools by focusing intensely on intrinsic value. Beyond letting the product experience drive adoption, they used real-time collaboration functionality that solved a genuine pain point.
- Use Extrinsic Value to Drive Initial Adoption, Not Long-Term Loyalty
- Branding and exclusivity can attract users, but retention may depend on intrinsic product strength. Mostly. For example, some of the most valuable brands on the planet are luxury goods. Burberry is a great example of a premium priced brand with a distinctive look they protect. But would the cachet remain if their scarves just fell apart easily? A digital example is Wordle. This game rose to popularity fast and seems to have sustained engagement. The simple challenge may have intrinsic value, but also a lot of social media visibility as players shared their scores on Twitter, Facebook, and elsewhere.
- Branding and exclusivity can attract users, but retention may depend on intrinsic product strength. Mostly. For example, some of the most valuable brands on the planet are luxury goods. Burberry is a great example of a premium priced brand with a distinctive look they protect. But would the cachet remain if their scarves just fell apart easily? A digital example is Wordle. This game rose to popularity fast and seems to have sustained engagement. The simple challenge may have intrinsic value, but also a lot of social media visibility as players shared their scores on Twitter, Facebook, and elsewhere.
- Anticipate Behavioral Shifts When Introducing Economic Elements
- Monitor for negative consequences like exploitation, inflation, or engagement drop-off. Ensure financial incentives don’t cannibalize core engagement. It will likely be challenging, (and maybe impossible), to undo such a move. Look at Audible. Audible’s audiobook subscription model demonstrates both benefits and challenges of introducing economic elements. They introduced a credit-based system where subscribers receive monthly credits to exchange for audiobooks. It initially drove subscription growth and seemed to align customer and business incentives. Then “credit hoarding” behavior developed as users became reluctant to spend credits on shorter or less expensive books. Users began calculating “credit worthiness” of books based on length/price, often ignoring content quality. (You can find forums and social media of people discussing and struggling with these issues.) Some users focused more on maximizing economic value than discovering enjoyable content. Audible had difficulty adjusting the system once established, as subscribers had structured their usage patterns around credit economics. When they introduced changes like expiring credits, they faced significant customer backlash including lawsuits. This example shows how introducing an economic incentive (credits) fundamentally changed user behavior in ways that were difficult to reverse.
- Monitor for negative consequences like exploitation, inflation, or engagement drop-off. Ensure financial incentives don’t cannibalize core engagement. It will likely be challenging, (and maybe impossible), to undo such a move. Look at Audible. Audible’s audiobook subscription model demonstrates both benefits and challenges of introducing economic elements. They introduced a credit-based system where subscribers receive monthly credits to exchange for audiobooks. It initially drove subscription growth and seemed to align customer and business incentives. Then “credit hoarding” behavior developed as users became reluctant to spend credits on shorter or less expensive books. Users began calculating “credit worthiness” of books based on length/price, often ignoring content quality. (You can find forums and social media of people discussing and struggling with these issues.) Some users focused more on maximizing economic value than discovering enjoyable content. Audible had difficulty adjusting the system once established, as subscribers had structured their usage patterns around credit economics. When they introduced changes like expiring credits, they faced significant customer backlash including lawsuits. This example shows how introducing an economic incentive (credits) fundamentally changed user behavior in ways that were difficult to reverse.
- Leverage Community-Driven Extrinsic Value
- Foster organic word-of-mouth advocacy. Use social proof mechanisms, but ensure authenticity. Look at language learning application Duolingo. They’ve created authentic community-driven extrinsic value through several mechanisms: leaderboards and leagues, streak sharing, course contributors, forums, and more. Real user progress is a basis for competition. You can’t level-up just by buying credits or other items. Community aspects enhance motivation without overshadowing the core educational purpose. Extrinsic community value complements rather than replaces the intrinsic value of language learning. They do all this resulting in authentic community engagement that can create powerful extrinsic value that drives adoption and retention without feeling forced or inauthentic.
Opinion Time – Which is Better?
So where do you think it’s better to focus? Intrinsic or extrinsic motivational imperatives? Of course there has to be some intrinsic value. The question is how much vs. also covering extrinsic issues. Which do you think buys you the most customer loyalty? You get to decide for yourself. At least, if you’re building a new product or service you can consider these issues from the start. Others of you might be stuck with what you’ve got. And that’s challenging for a lot of reasons. For one thing, brand perception, (or any perception really), can be challenging to change, even a little, should you decide you want or need to. The fundamental problem with extrinsic values is that they can be fickle. They can change fast. Especially lately where politics or social issues can quickly become incendiary, and products / brands can end up caught up in such things. (Either by accident or by intention; which has sometimes shown to have been incredibly costly.)
Show Me the Numbers
Product people are inherently performance oriented and like to look at the numbers. Even though we have many obvious quantitative KPIs, We can usually find ways to score qualitative experiences as well. Here’s some things we can consider for intrinsic and extrinsic metrics. Some of these, you’re likely looking at anyway. So this is just another viewpoint or dimension in which to consider them. Another option is to segment customers by some selected cohorts, (engagement levels, sales levels, retention rates, whatever), and then see if there’s differences based on intrinsic vs. extrinsic values.
Intrinsic Value Metrics
| Metric | Description | Measurement Approach |
|---|---|---|
| Feature Usage Frequency & Depth | How often and thoroughly users engage with core functionality | DAU/MAU ratios for key features; session depth analysis |
| Task Completion Rates | Success rate of users accomplishing primary goals | Funnel conversion rates; goal completion tracking |
| Time-to-Value | Speed at which new users experience core benefits | Time to first value moment; onboarding completion time |
| Error Rates & Support Volumes | Reliability of core functionality | Error frequency; number of support tickets per user |
| Core Functionality CSAT | User-reported satisfaction with primary features | Feature-specific satisfaction surveys; in-app feedback |
| Feature-Correlated Retention | Which functional elements drive long-term usage | Cohort retention analysis by feature usage patterns |
Extrinsic Value Metrics
| Metric | Description | Measurement Approach |
|---|---|---|
| Social Sharing Rates | Frequency of users sharing achievements externally | Share button usage; content distribution tracking |
| Achievement Completion | Pursuit of status markers and recognition | Badge/certification completion rates; progress tracking |
| Premium Tier Conversion | Motivation driven by exclusivity or status | Upgrade rates; premium feature adoption |
| Network Effect Measurements | User-driven growth through invitation | Referral rates; viral coefficient; community growth |
| Brand Sentiment & NPS | Willingness to recommend to others | Net Promoter Score; brand perception surveys |
| Community Engagement | Participation in social/community features | Forum activity; template sharing; collaboration metrics |
| External Event Correlation | Impact of outside factors on engagement | Usage spikes related to external trends or events |
Combined Value Analysis Metrics
| Metric | Description | Measurement Approach |
|---|---|---|
| Feature Adoption Funnel Analysis | Comparing utility vs. status feature paths | Comparative conversion rates between feature types |
| Value Orientation Cohort Analysis | Behavior differences based on value priorities | Segmentation by feature preference; usage patterns |
| Value Perception Gap Analysis | Difference between perceived and delivered value | Survey comparing expected vs. experienced benefits |
| Economic Value Perception | Willingness to pay based on value emphasis | Price sensitivity testing; feature value attribution |
| Value Balance Score | Composite metric of intrinsic/extrinsic balance | Weighted scoring of key intrinsic and extrinsic indicators. (E.g. subscription retention score made up of intrinsic(user satisfaction), and extrinsic(engagement). (Assign percentage levels for each.) |
| Competitive Value Positioning | How your value mix compares to competitors | Feature comparison; user perception research |
| Value Alignment Index | How well value delivery matches user motivation | Correlation between stated motivations and actual usage |
Conclusion
Within digital product development, understanding and intentionally designing for both intrinsic and extrinsic value creates a powerful foundation for sustainable success. While intrinsic value ensures your product delivers genuine utility and satisfaction, extrinsic value amplifies adoption and creates meaningful connections to users’ broader goals and identities. You don’t have to choose between these value dimensions, you can thoughtfully balance and integrate both, recognizing that this balance may shift throughout the product lifecycle.
Next Steps
While I’ve been able to find a lot of general information on ideas of intrinsic and extrinsic values and some of the psychology behind them, I haven’t seen much in terms of planning frameworks. I’m going to try to build something for that.