Being Sensitive to Human Needs

I went to a small high school in Jakarta six years ago. The classes were initially not equipped with air conditioners. Everybody knows that Jakarta is always humid and hot. Being in a class with another forty young and energetic students with Jakarta’s weather was not particularly a fantastic experience. Everybody was complaining on how hot the class was. Therefore, the student committee directed the students’ voice to the school in regards to this issue. They basically stated that air conditioners were crucial in order to create more comfort to the students and hence higher productivity.

After a long debate, the school agreed to provide air conditioning system in our classes in a couple of months. Everybody was exciting. However, after the system was set up some students were complaining on how the classes were too cold. I suppose this simple experience represents how human is never meant to be satisfied. Once a need could be fulfilled there will soon come a new desire. Human desire is always changing from time to time. And I believe that the nature of business is actually to provide satisfaction to human desire.

Edward De Bono stated that human needs are basically divided into several different types. These are physiological needs (air, food and water), safety needs (life stability and protection), social needs (love and family), ego needs (status, fame, and glory), and self actualization needs (achievements, freedom, and feelings of confidence). One of these needs would be our primary need in different context of life. In the modern society, the change in the global condition would alter our primary needs. Hence, different condition would trigger different priorities.

When the twin towers were attacked, safety needs became the American primary concern. When the great drought came early last year in Australia, water need became the priority. In business environment, being sensitive to the change in human or market desires would enable us to be a market leader. The market is actually more important than the marketing itself. However, this issue is often forgotten by the marketers. By understanding human desires we would be able to create the high value products or services. The job of a marketer is to be able to determine changes in people priorities and turn it into a new solution.

As the number of websites on the internet increased exponentially, Google was the only company who understood that being able to find reliable and relevant information easily from millions of websites would be the major need. With their search engine we could find our desired information within seconds. No wonder google attracts hundreds of millions of traffic daily.

Pesan Delivery (PD) understands the Jakarta’s chaotic traffic causes troubles to office worker fulfilling their lunch appetite. It would take more time driving to the favorite restaurant than actually indulging themselves with the lunch. Therefore, they provide the delivery services from a wide range of great restaurants to provide simplicity and convenience.

Therefore, try to be close to your customers.

Comments, opinions, and questions are more than welcome.

David Herlambang
MarketingFirst

Current Problem, Current Opportunity

The phrase ‘something happens for a reason’ might seem too trivial for us, but few people realize that certain things do happen for good reasons.

Australia, just like any other Western countries, is turning into a health-conscious society. Its alarming obesity rate triggers the Heart Foundation to promote healthy lifestyle through its campaigns. One of its significant efforts is to introduce a “tick” program, aimed to help consumers make healthier food choice conveniently. Basically, all food products which have met strict heart foundation standard have a “tick” label on their packaging. This “tick” will differentiate these products from those which are deemed to be unhealthy.

McDonald’s, being the biggest junk food provider in the world, sees this healthy lifestyle trend as an alarming situation. When more and more people become health-conscious, they will consume less junk food. This would mean bad business for this giant fast food chain.

Aware of this threat, McDonald’s quickly joins the crowd by going into the health-conscious bandwagon. They create new menus which can get the Health Foundation’s approval “tick”. They do continue selling the old hamburgers and fries, but some of their menus are healthier. This is a huge loop for their marketing. This strategy causes McDonald’s to have an ‘excuse’ to declare that they do try to address the current problem, even though they are still selling junk food.

Currently, McDonald’s has Health Foundation’s “tick” for their nine new menus. They create a better image to health-conscious people, and with this image, they attract new customers. Customers who have left McDonald’s after being disgusted by their junk food, are now invited back to try their healthy menus.

Similar story also happened in Jakarta few days ago. LG Indonesia announced that they would replace all LG in-store products that were damaged as a result of the flood. By doing this, they bring their relationship with the customers, in this case, the store owners, to the next level. Think of the store owners as LG’s front soldiers. These personnel will have a huge impact in determining who shall win the battle in obtaining the market share of the electronics in Indonesia.

Australia’s McDonald’s has switched a major threat into a new opportunity to get new customers, thus increasing profit. LG Indonesia also followed the trend of changing a problem into new opportunity to expand their market and distribution coverage.

Only few can see a problem as an opportunity, and when these people say that things happen for good reasons, I bet they are right.


Author: Michael A Oei – MarketingFirst Group
Edited by: Melissa Giovanni