MASLOW MEETS MARKETING.

Home > On Customers, Ramblings > MASLOW MEETS MARKETING.

September 11th, 2007

All of us who made it through Psych 101 freshman year learned about Abraham Maslow and his Hierarchy of Needs. Maslow postulated that human beings proceed to satisfy progressively higher levels of needs, beginning with basic physiological needs such as food, shelter and heat, then progressing though safety, companionship, social and self-esteem needs, and when all those needs have been met, to what Maslow referred to as “self-actualization.” The theory being that until the basics are handled, individuals cannot really begin to consider things that would make them self-actualized individuals.

James Barnes in his excellent book “Build Your Customer Strategy” brings Maslow’s basic hierarchy to the world of brand involvement. Essentially, he breaks customer relationship building into five distinct levels. The lower levels (1 through 3) are the basic stuff that companies must do to be competitive, viable entities. Things like produce a quality product at a fair value without too many hiccups in the delivery process and to deliver adequate customer service. In other words, the stuff most CEOs spend 99% of their time thinking about.

The problem is, these are not the things that build customer loyalty. They are important, to be sure. To not get them right is to really put your company behind the eight ball. But to the customer, they are little more than “table stakes.” Unless you are able to tap in to Barnes’s upper two levels of customer relationship building—which emphasize interpersonal connection and fulfilling the emotional needs of the consumer—you’re fighting for the customer on a transaction-by-transaction basis and are risking commoditization.

A few questions to ask regarding these upper levels are “How does our customer feel when he/she works with us?” “Does he/she look forward to working with us?” “Does he/she come away from his/her transactions with us feeling valued and important?” and “What are we doing to reward the customer for doing business with us?”

The Quisenblog