The symbolic product is what your product means: to the people who encounter it, in the context they encounter it in, given everything they already believe, desire, and identify with. It is not your brand. It is not your positioning statement. It's the total accumulated meaning your product carries in the world, built from every signal anyone has ever received about it. The symbolic product exists whether or not you are managing it deliberately. Your pricing says something. Your landing page says something. The first publications that wrote about you said something. The type of user who adopted you early says something. All of these signals add up to a meaning that users bring with them before they ever try the product, and that meaning shapes what they experience when they do. The symbolic product can be engineered; that is the job of Symbolic Engineering. But it cannot be controlled completely. External signifiers; what others say, what behavior around the product signals, what broader cultural narratives touch your category; all contribute to the symbolic product in ways you influence but don't fully control. The key insight is that the symbolic product is prior to the functional product in terms of experienced value. Meaning is set before the product is tried. The product then either confirms or breaks that meaning. See also: Functional Product, Product Meaning, Quilting.