Was Maslow a Lean Marketer?

In my post Lean needs Marketing, more than Marketing needs Lean!, I found a striking resemblance between the Toyota Supplier hierarchy depicted by Liker and Meier (The Toyota Way Fieldbook) and the Economic Pyramid model of Pines and Gilmore (The Experience Economy). I was intrigued how that fit into the discussion that the authors of Predictable Magic: Unleash the Power of Design Strategy to Transform Your Business on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and their own marketing tool, Psycho-Aesthetics Map.

The Psycho-Aesthetics Map is a two-dimensional mapping process in which the vertical axis shows the degree of need, from essential through to aspirational, while the horizontal axis shows the degree of interactivity from passive through to immersive. Existing products can be placed in their appropriate locations on the map, as can different groups of consumers, in order to identify gaps which might be suitable for the design of new products.

One of the first steps in Lean Marketing is to understand the customer’s decision making process. In Service Design and Design Thinking, we typically use the Customer Journey Map to depict this. Mapping this in detail and defining the resources, people, budget and marketing collateral to match each of these steps is imperative. Just as important as this journey is, putting context to where the customer is in their journey with your organization has equal if not superior importance. Are you at a stage of only being viewed as a commodity or are you in the transformation business?

The presentation below is my humble attempt to demonstrate that the basic needs of an enterprise is remarkably similar to that as an individual. Your thoughts?