The Neglect Of Product Need
Why Innovations Like The Cure To AIDS and Renewable Energy Take a Back-Seat To Ipods and Hummers.
As a student of product design, it is not only my goal to create elegent, effective solutions to problems, but to create finacially successful products. To do this as I was taught to do, each one of my concepts must be able to fill a product need. This concept however, is false. Product need has little to do with product success, and reason lies in the deffinition of product need.
Product need is a fairly straight forward topic, or rather, it should be. The relatively simple definition of user need is nearly universally muddied via insertion of the more complicated concepts of market demand, market potential, and the user’s (perceived) need. While these additional topics of consideration play a key role in designing and producing successful, profit turning products, they often detract emphasis from technology with greater product need.
In the most straightforward of terms, product need is a measure of how critical the advent and implementation of a product is to the well being of the user. Products with high need are those which are afford users the basic needs of every person: good food, clean water, housing, medical care, and means to produce and distribute these items. Product genera with intermediate need often facilitate greater efficiency in production and greater distribution of high-need products: transportation, communication, sanitation, and the like. Low-need products are essentially luxuries; these products are neither necessary to survival, nor are the particularly beneficial to productivity or quality of life. Examples of these products include video games, confections, and sports cars.
If the business world were to operate on this model however, many successful companies of today would not exist. Instead of relying on product need when designing and producing a product, the industry plans it’s course of action on market demand and market potential. Market demand is the a basic economic concept of the general want of the public for an item, and market potential is the predicted want for an item that has not yet been produced. Because businesses are motivated by profit, and because large market demand usually equates to a large profit, it is not surprising that the industry operates in this manner.
The breakdown though, is that market demand and product need are not the same. Consumers often have a perceived need for items that should really be in the low-need product category. Regardless of that fact, the demand for these less needed items will still increase, as will, in turn, production. To compound this, large corporations employ a variety of advertising approaches to increase the consumer’s level of perceived need, to further increase demand.
To add the dilemma even more, market demand is governed primarily by those with the most capital to spend. Obviously it’s of little concern to a profit minded company if a product with high need can not be paid for, and the high-need will make little impact on the more pertinent market demand. And because the wealthy have a high demand for luxury, a low demand for basic necessities, and an overwhelming sway over market demand, supplying cheaply available basic necessities matters very little to large corporations.
And so, product need has largely taken a back seat to market demand. Companies will develop and produce new products based not on the need for them in the world, but on their market potential. While in an ideal world, product need would directly equate to market demand, the current method of economy dictates that in order to design a successful product, much more must be taken into account. It also draws into our attention the bias our system has toward those with capital, and the responsibility the wealthy has to keep high-need products available to everyone.
-----This Just In...-----
This was the
original end to this article, but in light of recent events, I'll
now pose a question. With the recent drops in the stock market, a
generally unstable economy, and the decline in wealth of many of the
nation's richest citizens, will product need again play a direct role
in production? While many of the United States programs to help
provide life's necessities may disappear, so too will the
demand of the luxuries that the economy makes its money on.
While this could lead some companies to
further increase their goods, the smarter of the corporations will
realize that the time where that strategy was acceptable has passed for
the moment, and that the most intelligent plan of action would be to
provide cheaper products, with greater need and wider appeal.
As a recent example of this, look at the purchases of
SUV's. When gas prices rose, SUV purchases severely dropped because
of the cost to own them. Now though, not only can the
consumer not afford to fill their tank, but they can't afford the
vehicle to begin with.
Perhaps now, in this burning, ash
leaden economy aching for rebirth, a market based more directly on
product need can emerge. With the hopeful implementation of
government public works programs and federally funded research, we
can get back to designing and producing the things that really matter,
and the things the world really needs.
Ricky Willems - Oct 1, 2008.
Published - Oct 11, 2008.