Tester to know characteristics of a product

Product knowledge is extremely important for testers. By Product knowledge, I mean all things related to products such as: *Who is the user? *How users are expected to use product *How product is expected or not expected to use *How the same product is doing on the market Those knowledges can be achieve by exercising, asking and learning the product and it takes time. The earlier you know product, the better you are. I’m also not clear why automation approach can help learning product knowledge. Most of automation practice is to repeat what manual test has performed. It means that there’s little to no new things discovered in automation test. If I am evaluating a product for the end user / client this kind of knowledge is less important, but knowledge about the future use of the product is very important. I can also automate at this level – most of the time using different tools. If I am performing exploratory testing no specific knowledge is needed. This is pure manual testing.