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The social construction of needs
Author(s) -
Buttle Francis
Publication year - 1989
Publication title -
psychology and marketing
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.035
H-Index - 116
eISSN - 1520-6793
pISSN - 0742-6046
DOI - 10.1002/mar.4220060304
Subject(s) - ignorance , maslow's hierarchy of needs , social needs , fundamental human needs , sociology , frame (networking) , customer needs , software deployment , formative assessment , public relations , marketing , psychology , epistemology , social psychology , business , computer science , political science , law , philosophy , pedagogy , health care , telecommunications , operating system
This article relocates the concept of needs from a psychological frame of reference to an anthropological one. Defining needs as the requirements of a particular social life leads to the conclusion that needs vary both historically and geographically. This opposes the views of Abraham Maslow who conceived of needs as universal and instinctoid. This article suggests that needs are learned from the privileged discourse of a community. If marketing and advertising are the privileged discourses of 20th century Westernized cultures, we can conclude that they have a formative effect on needs. Other issues are the unsuitability of marketing researchers' principle investigative methods for needs research, marketers' ignorance of the needs of distant cultures and communities, and the potential that such ignorance has for wasteful deployment of limited marketing resources.