Maslow vs Branding

Why are certain brands so important and meaningful to some customers that they feel compelled to tell the world about them? What makes them go that extra mile?
Understanding human behavior—what motivates people to do certain things and act certain ways—is at the very core of successful marketing.
This is where the work of the late, great psychologist Abraham Maslow comes in.
Maslow postulated that we humans have an ascending order of needs and used a hierarchal pyramid to prioritize them. At the bottom levels of the pyramid are our physiological needs, which include basic things like food, shelter, and clothing that we all need to survive.
At progressively higher levels in Maslow's Hierarchy are the needs for safety and security, social interaction, and self-esteem. At the very top is self-actualization, a term Maslow coined to describe the ultimate human need to learn, grow, and reach one's full potential as a person.
We all desire on some level to self-actualize, both to be at peace with ourselves and to try to be the best we can be. As humans, we are drawn to people, places, groups, causes, companies, and, ultimately, brands that we believe can help us towards our ultimate goal of self-actualization and total fulfillment.
Why the Hierarchy of Needs Is a Crucial Tool for Branding?
Perhaps the most important thing to take away from Maslow's Hierarchy of Human Needs is his theory that all human beings start fulfilling their needs at the bottom levels of the pyramid.
In short, we fill our low physiological needs first. Higher needs like safety, social interaction, and esteem basically do not exist at this point. Logically, survival comes first.
However, once an individual has satisfied his or her lower level needs, the higher level needs become influential in motivating behavior.
As Maslow notes time and time again in his work, "Man is a perpetually wanting animal."
Maslow's writings break down the underlying drivers of human behavior and decision making. Maslow never mentions the phrase "brand loyalty" in his books, but his Hierarchy of Human Needs and concepts like self-actualization are key to understanding why consumers consistently choose one brand over another and enjoy such strong relationships with them.
So, why is fulfilling higher level needs so integral to building strong customer loyalty? What's the connection, you ask? The answer is, higher level needs influence future human behavior much greater than lower level needs. It is the brands that can fulfill human needs on the higher levels of the hierarchy that become irreplaceable in the mind of the consumer.
That's what customer loyalty is really all about: being irreplaceable.
True customer loyalty is not only about getting a customer to consistently choose your brand over another. It's for that same customer to always believe (and then go tell the world) that your company's brand has no equal!
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