needs | Hinesight

Glass Houses

April 5, 2013 by Andy Hines Leave a Comment

A great post by “The Consumerist” on a social-media driven issue on Future of Artificial Dyes in Kraft Macaroni & Cheese. Mary Beth Quirk tells the story of how two bloggers triggered an online petition with over 270,000 signatures that led to a meeting between the bloggers and Kraft. Here’s a telling quote from the piece: “In a one-hour meeting with me and [the other blogger], Kraft told us they ‘can’t predict the future’ of dyes in Macaroni & Cheese,” she said. “I can give them a preview: if Kraft is anything like the hundreds of other companies facing a consumer uprising online, they’ll eventually start listening to their customers and work with us to ensure the health and safety of all Kraft Macaroni & Cheese products.” That is strong stuff!

In ConsumerShift, “Glass Houses” was one of the seven key “meta-needs” reshaping the consumer landscape. It suggested that growing numbers of consumers would shift to an activist and sometimes aggressive orientation. They would be intolerant of behavior they deem wrong and are not afraid to let the offender, or any interested party, know about it. They feel they are not to be trifled with and that their values and beliefs are important and need to be respected. These consumers are watching, often all the time. They are often savvy users of technology and expert in the world of information, and they use that to support their cause. Accountability is the buzzword; it won’t always be pleasant; and it won’t always be fair. The best an organization can do is stay consistent and true—or, closing the circle back to our first need state cluster, be authentic. “Spin” and message control and such tools will only get organizations into trouble. Telling the truth will, eventually at least, earn respect and credibility that will be appreciated and rewarded over the long haul.

Sounds like we have an interesting case example of “glass houses” here! Andy Hines

Filed Under: Foresight, Values Tagged With: activism, activist, consumerist, Consumershift, future, glass houses, kraft, need states, needs, values

A Framework of Situations for Need States

September 1, 2012 by Andy Hines Leave a Comment

How might the universals needs we’ve identified earlier fit in with daily life? We need a generic framework of situations to bring specificity to the universal needs in order to craft the emerging need states. For ConsumerShift, I used the framework from John Robinson’s Time Diary studies, as reported in his excellent book, Time for Life, in which he tracked Americans’ time use via diaries and broke down daily activities into several categories (work, household/family care, shopping, personal/biological necessities), learning, leisure (entertainment/recreation), affiliation, and communications). I think this framework applies reasonably well across affluent nations even though it is a US source. [Remember, a key point is that we are looking for new-to-the-world need states and thus we'll emphasize affluent nations where these are more likely to emerge.]

Table. Situational needs

Committed time Free time

Work Learning

Shopping Leisure (entertainment/recreation)

Household/family care Affiliation

Personal/biological necessities Communications

This simple framework was useful to get started. The first step in creasing the needs states was to craft a simple matrix comparing theuniversal needs with Robinson’s categories above, with more specific need states being identified at the intersections where appropriate. This led a list of literally hundreds of potential specific need states. In the next post, we’ll finish the process of how I arrived at the need states ConsumerShift. Andy Hines

Filed Under: Values Tagged With: consumer understanding, Consumershift, john robinson, need states, needs, values

Summing the universal needs

September 1, 2012 by Andy Hines 1 Comment

I jumped the gun in my last post in suggesting we could move directly to the situation-specific needs. First, it would probably be more helpful to show what the universal needs were!
The table below organizes the universal needs using Maslow’s structure and notes how the categories overlap with the New Dimensions values: survival needs–traditional values; belonging needs–modern values; self-actualizing needs–postmodern values; self-transcending needs–integral values. The needs are further organized into three subcategories: self-related, other-related, and existential. By reading across the rows, one can get a sense of how needs evolved over time as an individual matures. Here is a scenario using the self-related needs as an example:
• First, one eats, drinks, and seeks security, etc.
• When those needs are met, self-respect is the next quest
• When that need is met, it is on to independence, creativity, etc.
• Finally, it’s on to fulfilling one’s purpose.

Real life, of course, does not proceed that linearly or sequentially, but iterates, starts, and stops. The point is that the overall directionality holds, and it gives a sense of how priorities shift over time. The satisfied needs don’t go away, but become less of a focus as new needs challenges emerge.

With that set, now we’re primed to move to situation-specific needs in the next post. Andy Hines

Filed Under: Values Tagged With: consumer understanding, Consumershift, maslow, needs, universal needs, values

The Value of Emerging Need States

September 1, 2012 by Andy Hines Leave a Comment

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

Filed Under: Values Tagged With: consumer understanding, Consumershift, need states, needs, values

Needs values and worldviews

August 31, 2012 by Andy Hines Leave a Comment

ConsumerShift takes the point of view that values changes are the single best indicator for gaining insight into the emerging future landscape. And they are not alone. A couple of my most exciting findings during my research was discovering their links to needs and worldviews. Needs are the motivators for action that values often address, and values cluster together into fairly coherent patterns or worldviews.

The table below shows the linkages to the New Dimensions Values types. The segments of needs are drawn primarily from Maslow’s Hierarchy of Human Needs and the Worldviews from Beck’s Spiral Dynamics (which actually has nine categories). The way to read the table, for example, is that a consumer with modern values will be focused on belonging and status needs organized under an orange or “competitive” worldview.

How needs-values-worldviews fit together
Needs	Values	Worldviews
Survival	Traditional	Order (Spiral Blue)
Belonging	Modern	Competitive (Spiral Orange)
Self-Actualization	Postmodern	Communitarian (Spiral Green)
Self-Transcendence	Integral	Integrative (Spiral Yellow)

What is really exciting from a research point of view is that each of these systems (as well as some others not mentioned here) was derived independently. It was exciting to me from my vantage point of looking across a wide swath of the consumer landscape to see that they were related! The overlap is almost perfect, yet they were done completely separately. Coincidence? I think not! Andy Hines

Filed Under: Values Tagged With: consumer understanding, Consumershift, needs, values, worldviews

Glass Houses

A Framework of Situations for Need States

Summing the universal needs

The Value of Emerging Need States

Needs values and worldviews

Hinesight

Categories