Consumer Motives

In the process of reading papers on consumer attitudes I came across Zinkhan (1999) who had expanded McClelland’s theory of needs (1961). Zinkhan had carried out research on people’s motivations to create websites. This inspired me to look more into motivational theories and ultimately lead to my final research aim:
to investigate the motivations of consumers to use mass customised products.

McClelland’s theory consists of three motivational needs; the need for achievement, power and affiliation. Zinkhan’s paper developed this further by including Snyder and Fromkin’s (1980) need for uniqueness and also by adding another category, which he classified as Utilitarianism. For my own research I might have to add the experiential need, which has been mentioned in the Mass Customisation studies carried out on consumer’s attitudes (Fiore et al. 2004; Hunt 2006). The experience to design or create one’s own product is one of the main advantages of Mass Customisation, besides the uniqueness of the product.

For his research Zinkhan employed a cartoon test as a projective technique, which I have also adopted for my own research. Further elaborations on this will be made at a later time.