Customer Needs & Why Customer Needs are Important

It is essential to understand the different types of customer needs from a business perspective so that you can meet them. 

Whenever a customer is considering making a purchasing decision, generally, there are four different classifications of needs that they might have on.

Businesses can try and ascertain what these needs are, do market research to uncover these needs of consumers and then decide which of these needs they’re going to meet with the products they offer to the markets.

Types of Customer Needs.

Price

The most fundamental need that many consumers have is the price. Many consumers are very budget-conscious on price is the most important factor for them when they’re deciding what goods and services they’re going to buy.

Businesses, if they uncover that in a particular market for particular goods or services, there’s a group of customers that are very preoccupied with the issue of price.

They are very conscious of the value of affordability. Then businesses might be able to create products that fit in with those needs of customers.

Quality

Other customers are less budget-conscious, though, for them, the product’s price is secondary to the quality of the good or service they are purchasing.

For some consumers they want durability. They want to buy a product that will last for a considerable amount of time; maybe it’s branding and image.

They want to buy a product that they think betrays a certain perception.

Or they want to buy a product that achieves a certain quality standard, perhaps maybe a certain level of technological advancement or product functionality on they’re prepared to pay more for the privilege.

Convenience

For some products, price and quality issues might not be as important to some consumers as the convenience of the product.

There are certain products that we might buy, maybe the ones that we regularly buy, where convenience is the essential element of our purchasing decision.

When we buy stable goods that we regularly purchased, maybe things like milk or bread, sometimes the convenience of the item that’s the most important thing to us.

We want most products to be available to us in a location that’s convenient. We don’t want to have to work hard to purchase that product.

When purchasing a new car, we’re prepared to make an effort, putting research to travel, to buy it when we’re looking to buy a packet of milk. We wanted to be available from a convenient location for us.

Businesses need to understand their consumers in the marketplace for whom convenience is their priority; they can then reflect that in the products or the services they provide.

It’s a Variety of Choice.

That’s the most critical factor in their purchasing decision. Some consumers need choice.

They want products to be available in different formats, different sizes, different specifications.

They might want to be able to tweak the product, maybe to customize the product slightly to their exact specifications.

They might be prepared to pay more for it and be less convenient to obtain as long as they get that choice in their purchasing decision.

Why it is important to know Customer needs?

Why can’t businesses create the products that they think will be successful regardless of what customers might need from the product,

Sales

The first is that sales can be tightly linked to meeting customer needs. Once you ascertain what kind of needs customers have, the most important factor to consumers in this market is the price and the quality.

Is it focusing on convenience or choice? Then, if you can provide products that match most customers’ needs, you can generate more significant sales, and the converse of that is also true.

For Business Survival

If you don’t meet customers’ needs through the products and services that you offer, it might jeopardize your businesses’ chances of survival.

If you produce a good for a market when prices the most critical need that consumers have and yours is costly, then it might be your business struggles to survive.

You might be operating in a different market, where quality is the predominant factor that consumers focus on your product is inferior quality. It damages the prospects of your business’s survival.

If businesses can understand customers’ needs, it might help them generate more significant sales, helping in their business survival.