The Handbook of Technology and Innovation Management

3.2. The Languages of Customer Needs

With respect to innovation and new product development, the language associated with 'customer needs' differs across the marketing, engineering, and industrial design literatures. Different terminology is often used interchangeably: needs, wants, attributes, features, requirements, specs, etc. For example, in their review of the product development literature, Krishnan and Ulrich (2001) indicate that a useful representation of a product is a vector of attributes, which they consider also to include customer needs, customer requirements, product specifications, engineering characteristics, and technical performance metrics. Even customers themselves often use these terms interchangeably (e.g., Captain, 2004). Customer needs are also context dependent (e.g., Green et al., 2006), particularly with respect to usage (where and how the product is used), consumer (who will use the product), and market (what competing products are available).

Any discussion of 'needs' should probably start with Maslow's (1954) widely known hierarchy of needs theory^[] According to Maslow, there are five levels of needs ranging from basic needs that are present at birth to more complex psychological needs, which only become important once the lower level needs have been satisfied^[] At the lowest, basic level are biological and physiological needs (e.g., air, food, drink, shelter, sleep, sex, etc.). The next level includes safety needs (e.g., security, order, law, etc.); ...