What consumers truly value can be difficult to pin down and
psychologically complicated. But universal building blocks of value do
exist, creating opportunities for companies to improve their performance
in existing markets or break into new markets. In the right
combinations, the authors’ analysis shows, those elements will pay off
in stronger customer loyalty, greater consumer willingness to try a
particular brand, and sustained revenue growth. Three decades of
experience doing consumer research and observation for corporate clients
led the authors—all with Bain & Company—to identify 30 “elements of
value.” Their model traces its conceptual roots to Abraham Maslow’s
“hierarchy of needs” and extends his insights by focusing on people as
consumers: describing their behavior around products and services. They
arrange the elements in a pyramid according to four kinds of needs, with
“functional” at the bottom, followed by “emotional,” “life changing,”
and then “social impact” at the peak. The authors provide real-world
examples to demonstrate how companies have used the elements to grow
revenue, refine product design to better meet customers’ needs, identify
where customers perceive strengths and weaknesses, and cross-sell
services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]