Customer Needs and Wants: Is there really a difference and why should we care?

Yesterday I mentioned a book by Peter C. Brinckerhoff, Mission-Based Marketing, that helps non-profits and other mission-driven companies stay competitive. Brinckenhoff makes an interesting distinction early in the book that's worth sharing, as it’s extremely helpful no matter want type of company you work for or lead. He writes:

“…there is a huge difference between needs and wants. You may need to rethink your traditional view of working to meet customer’s needs. What you must target is their wants. … People have needs, people seek wants. There is no more fundamental, no more important foundational success for successful marketing than those six words: People have needs, people seek wants.”

I am in totally agreement. If your company is not meeting your customers’ needs, you are not going to be here in a couple of years. And if you’re not fulfilling your customers’ wants, you may be here a couple of years, but your business is not going to be in good shape; you will be constantly playing a reactive game of catch-up to the company or organization who is fulfilling customers’ wants. And the reactive game is always more costly, more stressful, more damaging to your brand, and just plain less profitable. The motivation to find, purchase, and use products is driven more by wants than by needs. Our human needs will be fulfilled, one way or another. What and who fills those needs is based on our present wants, desires, dreams, and inspirations. We feel the need, then—faced with many options—we choose our want. And even more than that: we will go out and search for, even evanglized for, things we want. You won't find people doing that for things they simply need.

This key point also relates to definitions of “quality,” which I referenced in an earlier post (Sept. 18), in particular, those by Noriaki Kano and his “attractive quality” dimension of the word. Customers judge the quality of our products, brand(s), and companies based on a combination of meeting fundamental needs and surpassing their expectations (fulfilling desires).

So how do we determine which is which—a customer need or a customer want? Well, it all starts by listening. How to listen, what to listen for, and how to makes sense of what we hear? All fodder for next week’s posts….