Two weeks ago, I published a concept on this blog called the Internet Hierarchy of Needs, building on Maslow’s work. Now Communispace has come out with research supporting this concept.

Communispace?s hypothesis: people are looking to fulfill six essential social needs online, and the organizations that understand this and build the right kind of social networking opportunity are more likely to create deeper emotional bonds than usually exist between companies and customers.

Here is the map that Communispace created to show how different social needs are met with different social networks:

The basic concept behind Maslow’s work, and my Internet adaptation, is this: lower-level needs must be met before higher-level needs will become apparent. For example, in Maslow’s model, basic life needs such as air (level 1) must be met before a person will focus on security (level 2).

I suggested that the evolution of the Internet follows a similar pattern, with the needs ascending as follows:

1. Existence Needs
2. Connectivity Needs
3. Organization Needs
4. Semantic Needs
5. Self-actualization

Here again is the diagram I created:

Communispace’s research demonstrates the power of following such a model:

Communispace tapped its other research on social networking behavior and found that when companies meet the full range of social needs, they gain trust and deep insights into their consumers and community members ? marketing nirvana.

Don’t you think that trust and deep insights into your customers and community members is something worth striving for?

This entry was posted on Friday, December 28th, 2007 at 4:15 am and is filed under People matter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.