Without customers, no business can get off the ground, let alone survive. Knowing something about your customers, what they need, how much they can ‘consume’, who they buy from now, all seems such elementary information that it is hard to believe so many people could start without those insights: and yet they do.

There is an old business maxim that says the customer is always right. But that does not mean they are necessarily right for you. So as well as knowing who to sell to, you also need to know the sorts of people who are not right for you and accept that trying to interest them will be a waste of scarce resources on your part.

Recognizing needs

The founder of a successful cosmetics firm, when asked what he did, replied: ‘In the factories we make perfume, in the shops we sell dreams.’

Those of us in business usually start by defining our business in physical terms. Customers, on the other hand, see businesses having as their primary value the ability to satisfy their needs. Even firms that adopt customer satisfaction, or even delight, as their stated maxim often find it a more complex goal than it at first appears.

Consider exactly what Mothercare is selling when it markets its upmarket maternity wear range. It made clothes for the mother-to-be, sure enough: but the primary customer needs it was aiming to satisfy was neither to preserve their modesty nor to keep them warm. The need it was aiming for was much higher: it was ensuring that its customers would feel fashionably dressed, which is about the way people interact with each other and how they feel about themselves. Just splashing, say, a Tog rating showing the thermal properties of the fabric, as you would say, a duvet would cut no ice with the Mothercare potential market.

Until you have clearly defined the needs of your market(s) you cannot begin to assemble a product or service to satisfy them. Fortunately, help is at hand. A US psychologist, Abraham Maslow, who taught at Brandeis University, Boston, and whose International Business School now ranks highly in the Economist’s survey of top business schools, demonstrated in his research that ‘all customers are goal seekers who gratify their needs by purchase and consumption. He then went a bit further and classified consumer needs into a five-stage pyramid he called the hierarchy of needs.

Self-actualization

This is the summit of Maslow’s hierarchy, in which people are looking for truth, wisdom, justice, and purpose. It’s a need that is never fully satisfied and according to Maslow only a very small percentage of people ever reach the point where they are prepared to pay much money to satisfy such needs. It is left to the likes of Bill Gates and Sir Tom Hunter to give away billions to form foundations to dispose of their wealth on worthy causes. The rest of us scrabble around further down the hierarchy.

Esteem

Here people are concerned with such matters as self-respect, achievement, attention, recognition, and reputation. The benefits that customers are looking for include the feeling that others will think better of them if they have a particular product. Much of brand marketing is aimed at making consumers believe that conspicuously wearing the maker’s label or logo so that others can see it, it will earn them ‘respect’. 

Social needs

The need for friends, belonging to associations, clubs, or other grouPS, and the need to give and get love are all social needs. After ‘lower’ needs have been met, these needs, which relate to interacting with other people, come to the fore. Hotel Chocolat founded by Angus Thirlwell and Peter Harris in their kitchen is a good example of a business based on meeting social needs. It markets home-delivered luxury chocolates but generates sales by having Tasting clubs check out products each month. The concept of the club is that you invite friends around and use the firm’s scoring system to rate and give feedback on the chocolates.

Safety

The second most basic need of consumers is to feel safe and secure. People who feel they are in harm’s way, either through their general environment or because of the product or service on offer, will not be over-interested in having their higher needs met. When Charles Rigby set up World Challenge to market challenging expeditions to exotic locations around the world, with the aim of taking young people up to around 19 out of their comfort zones and teaching them how to overcome adversity, he knew he had a challenge of his own on his hands: how to make an activity simultaneously exciting and apparently dangerous to teenagers, while being safe enough for the parents writing the cheques to feel comfortable. Six full sections on its website are devoted to explaining the safety measures that the company takes to ensure that unacceptable risks are eliminated as far as is humanly possible.

Physiological needs

Air, water, sleep, and food are all absolutely essential to sustain life. Until these basic needs are satisfied, higher needs such as self-esteem will not be considered.

We have always emphasized the importance of having a good website for your company because it can act as your best tool for marketing and sales. A poorly designed website can repulse people from your business and can cause you to lose customers before you even have them. Get in touch with HyperEffects to work on creating, enhancing, and making the website of your company more user-friendly.