As a child I would watch adverts for Star Wars or Bionicle Lego sets and after watching the commercials I would tell myself that I needed the new sets. My desire, or ‘need’ for the new sets was so strong that I would save every cent of my pocket money and being a lazy child I would go so far as too ask for more jobs to get paid a little bit extra. Come Christmas or my birthday I would have all the sets I desired written on a list in the hopes I would be lucky enough to get one.
What do you think, did my “need” for the new sets stem from the marketer’s or was it a need that was pre-existing?
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
Some may argue that to need is to require (something) because it is essential and thus they believe it is is confined to necessities such as food, water, sleep.
However, our needs go much deeper than that. The Maslow’s hierarchy of needs was developed by a psychologist named Abraham Maslow in 1943. It details our basic needs (safety and physiological), our psychological needs (love, belonging and esteem) and our need of self fulfillment (self – actualization).
(Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs)
Maslow’s theoretical concept is relevant through various fields from psychology to business/management and marketing.
Looking at this pyramid it’s evident that marketers cannot create our needs, though they can cater to them. Making consumers feel as though the products and services are fulfilling their needs.
Our Goal As Marketers, Fulfilling Needs
How can this Nike shoe fulfill our five needs? We will go into detail in this shortly.
One of our goals, if not our most important goal as marketers is determining consumer needs and developing or promoting goods or services catered to these needs. Often this is done through in depth market research on current trends and potential future trends.
With this shoe for instance their are five ways to market this shoe in order to appeal to our five needs. I’m going to demonstrate this through developing my own slogans/ campaigns that are catered to our various needs.
- Physiological need: “Run like our ancestors did” – A video advertisement showing an ancient African tribe running /hunting wearing Nike shoes. This appeals to our psychological needs as exercise has played a large role in our lives for thousands of years, it is important for us to stay healthy and the ad is a humorous take on that.
- Safety: “It’s like running on pillows” -A video advertisement showing a grandma jumping around and running on giant pillows. Depicts the shock absorption of the shoe i.e. the reduced impact on the consumers body. Evidently this clearly caters for our need of safety.
- Love/belonging: “All the athletes are wearing it, why aren’t you?”: Everyone wants to feel like they belong to something. This campaign could feature a video(s) of a celebrity walking through a busy public area (i.e. mall), wearing Nike shoes. As the celebrity is walking they are paying little regard of anyone else as they walk by, until something catches their attention. The scene snaps to a close up of the same Nike shoes (not belonging to the celebrity). The celebrities face lights up and they walk over to the individual wearing shoes and gives them a big high five.
- Esteem: “Feel good and look good running”: A video advertisement showing a tired, sweaty and rundown athlete with running shoes that have no label. Then have a fit, attractive and vibrant individual run past without any signs of exhaustion and wearing the Nike shoes. Demonstrates how individuals wearing the shoe will look and feel better (self- esteem) than those who wear other shoes.
- Self-actualization: “They are the epitome of running shoes, you’ll be among the best athletes with them on your feet”. This slogan will make the consumer feel self-fulfilled by owning the shoes as they will be among the best.
As you can see in the given examples Nike has their product, whilst they can’t create a need for consumers to have the product. They can cater their advertisements towards the consumers needs in order to capture their intention and incentivize them to purchase the good/service as it will address various problems in their day-to-day lives.
Consumer Behaviour 