The Value of Emerging Need States

ConsumerShift uses needs states for illustrating how values changes, along with universal needs, and contextual trends, come together to reshape consumer life. By highlighting emerging areas of consumer need, they provide a “target” for market researchers, new product and business developers, and strategists to aim at as they anticipate and plan for the future. The simple idea is that if you want to develop a product to hit the market in five or ten years, it is useful to understand how consumer needs may have changed over that period of time. So, don’t develop products (or plans) for the future, by assuming things will be the same in the future as today – they often won’t!

The need states were crafted by identifying patterns or commonalities between universal needs, consumer values, and contextual trends. So the emerging needs states are the sweet spots where consumer needs, values and trends come together in the future. For instance, “the authenticity premium” is one of the 23 need states in the book that is summarized as: “Pursuing the pure and unadulterated, not tainted by marketing spin and packaging.” It derived from a combination of two needs, three values, and two trends.

The universal needs, which provide the foundation for creating the need states, are drawn primarily from Maslow’s Hierarchy, supplemented by the excellent work of Max-Neef and Reiss. Maslow’s system suggests a progressive development of needs over time—in other words, simpler needs must be satisfied before more complex ones–which fits with the view here on the development pattern of values changes. The values, of course, come from the New Dimensions Values Inventory. The trends are treated in a separate chapter in the book.

Since a list of 23 is a bit too long to be useful, they were group into 7 thematic ‘meta-needs.” The meta-needs are useful thoughtstarters for ideation sessions –“how does “Keeping it Real” (the meta-need which the authenticity premium is a part of) provide opportunities for us in …..”They provide help for today’s researchers, students, and businesspeople in developing futures-centric ideas aligned with the future rather than the past.

They are ’emerging” in the sense that we can see some evidence of them today, but they are on the fringes rather than the mainstream. In the consumer landscape of the future, they will be in the mainstream. The time to prepare is now! Andy Hines