How to Measure Needs or Motives

The following methods can be used to measure needs or motives.
(1) Observation and Inference:  Motivations can be inferred from the action and statements of consumers. For instance ,if before buying a washing machine ,a couple visits appliance stores to examine and to price washing machines and if they study appliance advertisements and seek relevant information from consumer reports ,the logical inference we can make is that they have a need for an efficient ,practical way to wash clothes.

However inferring needs or motives through observations ,may not always be valid. For instance,it may seem reasonable to assume that a person who works long hours in business has a strong achievement motive,but in reality he may simply have nothing of interest to do in the evenings.

This method of using observation to infer consumer motives is a method borrowed from anthropology called watching closely how consumers interact with a product and then deducing how it fits into their lives. Such a study for breakfast cereal would involve watching consumers shopping for and buying the product ,observing the household members preparing and eating the product,and seeing how and where it is stored in the house.

(2) Depth Interview: Needs or motives can also be measured through non structured depth interviews. In this type of interview,respondents are questioned individually for as long as several hours by an interviewer who is trained to establish rapport and not to guide the discussion excessively. Respondents are encouraged to talk freely about their needs activities or interests,or about a specific object or brand under study. Verbatim accounts of interviews are then carefully studied and analyzed, together with reports of respondents moods and any gesture or body language they might have used to convey attitudes or motives. such studies are very useful,especially for helping marketers know the appeals they might use.

(3) Focus Group: This is a variation of the depth interview in which eight to ten participants ate encouraged to discuss their product usage,product reactions,interests ,attitudes,lifestyle and so on. Though focus groups is similar to depth interview,in many aspects,its difference is that it relies on the principles of group dynamics to yield richer insights than may be possible by others interviewing the same people sequentially. Focus groups can be done in much less time and are much less expensive to conduct than depth interviews.

(4) Self Reports:Another way to find out the needs and goals of individual is simply to ask them,either verbally or with a written questionnaire. Self report,refers to pencil and paper test given to consumers which inquire directly about their desire, fears,goals,successes,failures. The information obtained is then qualified to yield a measure of the strength of a specific need or motive.

In using self reports,we have to be careful of two potential problems or limitations. The first is that individuals may not themselves be aware of the actual reasons or motives underlying their behavior and may buy unconsciously rationalize their action;that is ,they may assign reasons or  motives that are acceptable to their personalities  but are not ,in fact, accurate. They do this with no awareness that they are rationalizing.