Need Vs. Want

The Marriage of Need … When You Didn’t Know You Wanted It

By: Kimberly Grant

We like what we like.  When we like it.  And how we like it! 

This is a part of the four personal factors of consumer behavior in marketing.  A more specific definition of consumer behavior is how individuals, groups, and organizations select, buy, use, and dispose of products and services, based on influences of cultural, social, and personal factors.

There are actually four types of personal factors in consumer behavior: age/stage of life, occupation/economic circumstances, personality/self-concept, and lifestyle/values.  It’s all a part of the grand scheme of marketing to us as a consumer.  Not to mention, we can be fickle creatures, honey!  Okay.  Maybe that’s a little too theatrical, but US consumers can be oh so dramatic at times. 

This creates a challenge (read: opportunity) for marketers to figure out the what, when, and how we want what we want.  Marketers are literally helping us do the thinking and deciding, which is great because I can never decide where I want to eat for dinner.  In some of my circles, I’m not allowed to pick the restaurant.  (There have been situations.)

Let’s focus on the occupation/economic circumstances factor to give you a little bit more insight into how marketers do that Jedi mind trick thing and make us realize there are products/services in the atmosphere that we need/want and don’t realize it. 

If I opened up a dry cleaning company (say: Grant’s Squeaky Clean) and I was scratching my head on who to market my service, I would first go with the obvious choice: consumers whose occupations warrant the need for a dry cleaning service and provide them with the level of income to purchase this service.  What does that mean? 

A potential consumer could be someone who works in an office that require suits to be worn at all times, like lawyers.  A good suit must be dry cleaned.  I could even expand my potential target audience to people who wear uniforms to work and have a middle-class level income, like police officers and firefighters.  Police uniforms need to be dry cleaned, as well as firefighter dress uniforms, which they wear for special occasions and when they ascend to becoming fire chiefs.

Once I’ve communicated with and established a customer base with those occupations, locally, I would probably be thinking about ways to expand my reach.  As a woman, I sometimes think about parties and weddings, because they’re fun.  Those events tend to require clothing and linens that must be dry cleaned.  Those events tend to be organized by event planners.  And bam!  Another target audience for my dry cleaning services. 

All kinds of things need to be dry cleaned, like wedding and banquet dresses, table linens, and even those fancy white curtains that are used to make a space look more elegant.  These event planners could use and recommend my services to their various clients.  To further sweeten the deal, I could offer an express cleaning service (at a small, additional cost) for all clients who mention the event planners when they make their purchases.  It would be the perfect marriage between buyer and seller communication; otherwise known as marketing.

You can read more marketing tips from my last post about customer lifetime value on this site.