Chapter 17 Consumer Ideology, Requirements and Needs
The fundamental human condition is subject to several needs! The need to acquire a given thing results from the need for a) social ideological benefits and b) general personal benefits. A large group of people can thus feel that they lack something. This feeling may mean that the group focuses attention on some specific item which they acquire for themselves. This item could well be a specific toy.
The classical way of classifying needs is, like Maslov, to formulate a hypothesis that needs form a hierarchy. The motivation for the hierarchy of needs is that needs at a lower level have to be fulfilled before needs at a higher level become apparent.
Where the needs of a large group of people are concerned, they are described as the demand for a certain product. Where it is possible to describe a consumer group so precisely, we can see how this group is differentiated from other groups. We call this consumer segmentation.
Where it is possible to establish which specific characteristics of the product appeal to the consumer group’s need to acquire it, we have “benefit segmentation”.
However, as mentioned, consumers want to acquire both:
A. ideological benefits of purchase and
B. personal benefitsof purchase.
These are described in the following.