psychological approach to marketing
TRANSCRIPT
Maslow’s Inverted Pyramid Psychological approach to understanding Consumer Interest and Buying
Jasleen Kaur
1/16/2015
1.1 Introduction- Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a theory in psychology which is referred widely for human motivation. According to a lot of studies it also shows the path of growth and maturity in a human’s life. Hierarchy levels are as below-
1. Biological and Physiological needs - air, food, drink, shelter, warmth, sex,
sleep.
2. Safety needs - protection from elements, security, order, law, stability,
freedom from fear.
3. Love and belongingness needs - friendship, intimacy, affection and love, -
from work group, family, friends, and romantic relationships.
4. Esteem needs - achievement, mastery, independence, status, dominance,
prestige, self-respect, and respect from others.
5. Self-Actualization needs - realizing personal potential, self-fulfillment,
seeking personal growth and peak experiences.
In this article I try to use Maslow’s pyramid in understanding the buying behavior of a consumer by constructing an inverted image pyramid next to it. I have also taken guidance from Aristotle’s Seven Causes of Human Action which has helped me design this inverted image pyramid to Maslow’s pyramid. This theory is formulated on a basic premise that the human referred in the Maslow’s theory is also a consumer of one or the other product and thus it becomes important for the Marketer to understand his interest and behavior towards a particular product in a stated environment.
1.2 Theory- ‘Need’ by definition means ‘a psychological feature that arouses an organism to action toward a goal, giving purpose and direction to behavior.’ Since the organism is living a life that is changing with time (as one dimension) it is dynamic and changes in every possible duration. For a dynamic entity as ‘need’, Maslow’s pyramid comes across as static. It generalizes that all the humans will have these five needs and will strive to attain them all, one after another. The humans are capable of attaining these five needs in their lifetime but whether they realistically have them in their mind as a stated need, is dependent on a lot of factors- external (socio-economic factors of the place that human is living in) and internal (like education, intellect level, willingness to grow and mature) Maslow showcases the human needs regardless of the socio-political & economic environment the human is in. It might be possible that a particular person concerned is living in a very lower stratum of society and in his lifetime it is unable for him to reach Self actualization as per Maslow’s definition of Self Actualization. For him Self-Actualization might just mean a Sedan car, or his owned home because either he is not condition or not interested to think beyond that. In such case, it’s redundant for us to map his needs in this pyramid alone. We require the specific need hierarchy that exists in the consumer’s life at that specific time. Needs change in consumer’s life proportional to his education, monetary status, filial happiness, age and also how the social and economic factors of his country are interacting with each other.
1.3 Assumptions-
The pyramid in black is Maslow’s but for a market’s pursual it is incomplete. So I created the pyramid in Red (next to it which is an inverted image)
Both the pyramids interact with each other at various levels and have a fictional movement between them.
To each stage in the hierarchy of needs, there is a stage in the next pyramid that classifies the product, a marketer is trying to establish in the specific market.
Product is classified on the Modal Verbs of- Must, Need, Have to, Should and Desire. These represent what the product or the product category means to the consumer.
2.1 Case A-
It is an ideal set up where Maslow’s pyramid and Marketer’s Product pyramid are in equilibrium. Here the consumer-
Has definitions of needs exactly as the ones chalked by Maslow To every need of the consumer, marketer has a product to match. No product category is redundant or non-existent to him.
But since this condition can’t be uniform for each consumer, there is another set of pyramid interaction like below.
2.2 Case B-
Here the pyramids are not in equilibrium so we see the effective market is only on four needs- Safety, Belonging, Esteem and S.A.(Self Actualization) Consumers are grown in their intellectual level and the socio-economic conditions they stay in, have it for granted that they will have the biological and physiological needs fulfilled by the state or government, for example. Marketers who are trying to establish a product category with such needs (Biological) in mind will not find consumers ready to shed money for buying something which they know will be provided by another party which can be any entity in this case, right from state/ country to government.
Consumer feels that S.A. is not a desire and in his lifetime he should reach that point.
His basics are met so consumer’s interest level in product changes from Must to Need changes. He has grown from the earlier case of 2.1
Market gets confined by one block. In the below case, scenario further shrinks by two blocks because the consumer enters a super-developed zone. The two needs- Biological and Safety now are provided to him by his environment and his interest now lies in the above three parts of the pyramid.
To him, belongingness and love forms the core of his needs because he knows his survival and safety will be taken care of.
His struggle to reach S.A is intense because he realizes the worth of his life and is sure to reach there.
Also because his environment has freed him up by taking the responsibility of the two basic needs, it makes easy for him to travel the three blocks in reaching S.A.
2.3 Case C-
This is the ultimate rise a consumer can get because he will always have the need of belongingness within his ownership and no environment can fulfill it for the consumer by itself. Pyramids also interact in the opposite direction. First case of that would be like below-
2.4 Case D-
The biological needs are no longer a Must. The expectation is lowered that means the consumer is enjoying a weak or
no support from the environment he is staying in. S.A. in terms of Maslow’s words doesn’t exist in his understanding. The best
to which his intellect can go up is the Esteem and social status attainment. That becomes terminal to his intellect.
Marketer with the product relating to S.A. will have extreme difficulty in making the consumers understand his product’s purpose. For them, it would be of a very little interest till the environment doesn’t evolve them.
3.1 Conclusion and Application-
Even before a marketer enters a new market, after crossing various literal and metaphoric boundaries like Geographic, social, cultural, political and economic he studies the kind of customer and consumers there are in that particular market/ country/ state/ city. Whilst he is undertaking that research it’s important for him to understand the Consumer not only on the secondary market research but on the primary as well. Especially when the primary research wants to see both the kinds of questions-
Author- Jasleen Kaur is a Master’s in English and currently pursuing her MBA from Management Development Institute, Gurgaon (Major- Marketing and Strategy) She is presently working as a Marketing and Public Relations Professional at Canon India, with about 5 years of work experience. She can be reached at [email protected] or [email protected]
• Taking into consideration where marketer's product lies the Maslow's inverted pyramid and how it maps with the consumer's needs.
• Example- Is my product a must/ a should or a desire?
Is?
• Further questions that marketer feels are requisite for him to understand consumer's perceotion, prejudice, preference and related insightparameters.
What? How?
Who? Why?