The retention killer that never shows up in a requirements doc.This image was the consumer-generated collage of the ‘typical MISSHA user’ at the time: loud, immature, trying too hard, and far removed from the identity consumers actually aspired to. The consumer imagery shown here reflects perceptions of a specific product line at a particular moment in time, not the MISSHA brand as a whole. Original images sourced from research participants; recompiled and edited by the author for this article.The room was in Seoul, quiet except for the hum of the air conditioner. Behind the one-way mirror, product planners sat with notebooks, in the years before K-beauty shook the world. Then one sentence broke the silence.“If my boyfriend gives me this brand as a gift, that’s his way of telling me he wants to break up.”Every participant in the room nodded, as if on cue. The second sentence hit even...