Desire, Perceived Need and Tesla
Need plays a critical role in an individual’s life, but the conflict between need and desire is real, and has been an ongoing one. In fact, I would describe need and desire as two sides of the same coin. To understand the key difference, we first need to take a closer look at how “need” and “desire” are defined.
Desire can be defined as a strong feeling of wanting something, whereas need can be expressed as insufficiencies in our lives or something that is essential to our well-being. There is one key behaviour that separates the two and that is taking action.
When the desire translates into need, it forces individuals to take an action that may lead to gratification.
When we specifically look at need, every human being deals with two kinds of need — innate (born with) and acquired needs. As a Design Thinking practitioner while working on research engagements, a large chunk of time is dedicated towards understanding the user need and translating the user’s point of view in the form of a “need” statement — many a times derived from their desire (aspiration).
A need statement is an actionable problem statement used to summarise who the user is, the user’s need, and why the need is important to that user.
If we look at it in the context of a product or a service, the need which the consumer is seeking to fulfil, is a functional one (to get the job done). A case in point being, a mobile phone. The job of a mobile phone is to help users communicate irrespective of their location. The need can be fulfilled using either a feature phone or a smart phone, all you need is access to a mobile network.
If you look at how the smartphones have evolved over the decades, especially since the launch of the iPhone is phenomenal. But if you look at it from the need’s point of view, you will realise that the desire to multitask on a handheld device has been trigger for this evolution.
Apart from the functional need, there is an another type of need, and that can be termed as the perceived need. This type of need refers to an individual’s own judgment about the necessity or benefits of a particular service. If you want to see it in the form of an equation, it can be defined as
Desire — Need = Perceived need
There is an interesting interplay between need and desire how perceived need defines the probability of success. Let’s look at how Tesla leveraged the perceived need when it started its journey.
Tesla — Geek and Environmentalist
Tesla began its journey by launching their product in the top-end segment aka luxury/premium. It was already a crowded marketplace, with a slew of top brands (Mercedes, Audi, BMW, etc.) vying for the customer’s attention. These brands over the decades have solidified their positioning by crafting a perfect status statement, with an underlying message of “you have arrived.”
From the customer’s perspective, Tesla had nothing new to offer that could enhance their status any further. Tesla was aware of it, but it was critical for them to have this cohort of customers onboard, as only they could put the money on the table considering the price point. It was detrimental for Tesla’s long term survival. So, what did they do?
They focused on the aspirational differentiator which the wealthy cohort aspired for themselves — being identified as geeks or environmentalist. . They positioned their offering to this perceived need without compromising on the luxury aspect, which was a given for this cohort.
Mobility or Desire
If we look at the automobile domain overall, it’s a great example of the interplay between need and desire. Depending on what kind of an automobile manufacturer you are, the offering can be categorised in two parts.
Are you producing an object of mobility or an object of desire?
Taxi services, cab aggregators and other shared mobility services are the perfect examples of providing mobility, i.e., catering to the functional need. This is where the mass manufacturers come in. The future of this group will be governed by autonomous vehicles, shared mobility and mass transit.
If we look at in the context of the “object of desire”, consumers would want to ride or drive certain kind of vehicles and this is where the role of understanding the perceived need will be accentuated.
To sum up, the difference between the need and desire turns into a differentiator that plays a crucial role in the consumers’ decision-making process. This in tun, improves the probability of success of a product/solution.
What’s your perceived need story? Would love to hear your thoughts.
Until next time!
~ Sajid
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