What do you know about unmet needs? Theodore Levitt (a retired HBS marketing prof) used to say that "people don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill – they want a quarter-inch hole." It is true and not true. While it is always useful to understand what customers want to achieve and get done, there are often times when consumers don’t know what they want and what they need. Or even when they know, they cannot articulate it.
There is more in life than getting things done. We do a lot of things we don’t know why. Customer satisfaction surveys are of very limited use, because many of the things are not actionable. These surveys are largely useless when it comes to identifying unmet and unarticulated needs. The challenge with unmet needs is that customers are almost always unaware of these needs. At least not until they see a product, then they see the needs. Think about this, people may not be satisfied with how cumbersome the process of making their music portable is, but would not be able to articulate the value of an interface such as iPod iTunes. Users didn’t ask for the touch screen for iPhone or iTouch either.
Applied imagination is still something difficult to master for most organizations. There are many reasons why many companies fail to take advantage of innovative opportunities in their own industry: the lack of risk/prototype cultures, complex bureaucracies that stifle creativity, functional silos that are out of synch with what the customer ultimately wants and vendors that keep telling you you’re doing great etc. And the biggest one is everyone operates under the same logic or dogmas that are not getting enough challenged. It is also tricky in terms of finding the best approach to identify customer unmet needs.
I’ve seen so many company trying to do it in a wrong way and end up getting a sea of data that are 1/already known 2/unactionable. At Idea Couture, we do have a more unique and systematic way to identify unmet needs and linking them to high value opportunities.
Here is one funny example of unmet needs and you will have to tell me if that is high value or what job it helps a customer. One company learned from their research that their customer want to show their friends that they have active sexual activities without talking about it. Example would be a hicky (love bite) on the neck.
Talking inspiration from people who use “fake evidences of victimization”, someone has designed a kit that can be used to "strategic instigate jealously" or “bolster self-esteem” or for"social signaling". I don’t think I need to explain what those means. This complete toolkit provides a number of tools designed to create a wide variety of skin marks, from love bites to bondage marks. And on top of everything comes with “a lipstick marker, perfume and traces of hair (any color and length). The kit is called Traces of an Imaginary Affair. It comes in a choices of a wooden box or if you prefer an aluminum MacBookish finish box without the Apple logo of course. Anyone interested? Perfect brand extension for a company such as Braun or Durex? Can you think of any brands or friends that can use this? Let me know if you want to join when we start recruiting advanced users.
