Needs and Values
About
Receptiviti’s Needs and Values framework comprises 17 measures that evaluate aspects of what motivates a person’s preferences, habits, and decision-making.
Needs: Each of the 12 Needs measures should be interpreted as traits that can impact decisions and can be predictive of their consumption preferences and habits.
Values: Each of the 5 Values measures should be interpreted as factors that motivate and influence a person’s decision-making.
Receptiviti customers often use Needs and Values to understand their audience, employees, and people who are important to their businesses, and create messaging that aligns with their unique needs and values.
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Measures
Needs
| Score | Summary |
|---|---|
challenge | The tendency towards overcoming obstacles and achieving difficult things. |
closeness | The need or prioritization of intimate and affectionate bonds with loved ones. |
curiosity | The need or prioritization of exploring concepts that are either new to oneself or new to one’s society. |
excitement | The need for energetic activity in life, whether it be physical, social, or mental. In extreme cases, these people may have trouble with down-time or quiet time. |
harmony | The need for peace and agreement among those around a person. This may appear as an aversion to conflict or as strong conflict-management skills. |
ideal | To strive for a utopian or idealistic reality – one may become disillusioned when this is out of reach, or may be resilient in persisting toward the vision of a better world. |
liberty | To value freedom above all things, often at the expense of safety or equality. |
love | To very highly value affection, typically romantic affection. |
practicality | The main driver of decisions for someone who scores highly in practicality is what is the most logical or pragmatic choice. |
self_expression | The enjoyment of discovering and asserting one’s own identity, sexuality, artistry, and creativity. |
stability | The prioritization of comfort from things one relies on, and possible reticence of destabilizing changes such as leaving one's job or selling one's home. |
structure | The appreciation of a methodical, careful, and logical approach to accomplishing tasks. Not likely to be spontaneous and not error-prone in one's daily work. |
Values
| Score | Summary |
|---|---|
self_transcendence | Associated with the expansion of one’s personal boundaries, greater awareness of oneself and others, increased calmness and spirituality, and the experience of seeking coherence, integration, and meaning across all dimensions of life. |
conservative | To hold conservative values and place significant weight on the ways of life that one is used to, while tending to believe that change should happen slowly. |
self_enhancement | The need for inflating one’s own accomplishments or skills, often with the goal of elevating oneself above others. |
hedonism | To prioritize physical pleasures, including (but not limited to) food, alcohol, drugs, and sex. |
open_to_change | To value open-mindedness and to listen to input from a variety of sources. |
Science Behind the Framework
Needs
Identifying and understanding customer needs is incredibly useful in determining how they will respond to brands, product offerings, marketing campaigns, incentive programs, etc. (Armstrong, Kotler 2013). The Receptiviti Needs framework is rooted in the Universal Needs Map (Ford 2005). Ford’s work describes each need, as well as highlights how they complement each other, and how successful brands can appeal to strategic combinations of needs. The Receptiviti Needs measures unlock immense potential for marketers, employers, and any organization seeking to understand their customers. We provide data on all 12 of Ford’s needs, namely:
ChallengeClosenessCuriosityExcitementHarmonyIdealsLibertyLovePracticalitySelf-ExpressionStabilityStructure
See the Measures section for definitions.
Values
Fundamental human values have been studied extensively throughout the development of social sciences. These values help define how people organize themselves individually and into groups, as well as how they react to change (Schwartz 2006). Over the years, the labeling of these human values has varied. Schwartz’s work aimed at solidifying a core set of universal human values derived through empirical study in many countries across the world. His first iteration analyzed 20 countries to construct his initial framework of values (Schwartz 1992). He has since applied this framework to 68 countries to demonstrate its universality across humankind (Schwartz 2006). Schwartz’s work boils down the core values into five unique dimensions, which are calculated by the Receptiviti Values framework. These dimensions are:
ConservatismHedonismOpenness to ChangeSelf-EnhancementSelf-Transcendence
See the Measures section for definitions.
Specs and Examples
Needs and Values scores are between 0 to 100 and are baselined against our proprietary datasets consisting of language samples that exceed 350 words.
A language sample that generates a score of 80 on any Needs and Values measure implies that 80% of all samples in our baseline dataset have scores that are less than the score of the language sample being analyzed.
Note: Results will be most reliable when your text sample is >350 words in length.
Example 1: I do transcendental meditation. It's—it's great. And so I do that. And when I slip up on it, you know it's not the best because it's like—it's better when I do. And sometimes I can be in a ton of pain and meditate and it goes away. It's amazing. I also work out every day. But I also listen to my body. So if I'm in a lot of pain and deep stress, I might not do either as hard of a workout or I might, you know, not work out at all. I do listen to my body and I listen to what it's telling me. I do talk therapy. Dialectical behavioral therapy. And I also do lots of other things like opposite action, for example. So let's say you're feeling really depressed and you're at home and you've been at home for seven days straight and you just can't leave the house and you just—you practice opposite action. Someone invites you to go somewhere, or you reach out to a friend and you say, hey, you want to play a game of poker? Get up, get in your car, and go. Opposite action. That's something that I do all the time. All the time I actively work on myself. I have to. If I don't, I will sit and I will be in pain all day.
// partial response{"needs": {"challenge": 79.52765735952477,"structure": 30.38962307483074,}}
This sample scores quite high in challenge at 79.5. This means that almost 80% of text samples in our baseline dataset score less than this text sample for challenge, which evaluates a person's tendency towards overcoming obstacles and achieving difficult things.
On the other hand, this sample scores low in structure, at 30.3, indicating that the speaker does not have a particularly methodical or logical approach to things.
Example 2: I’m proudly the first person to graduate college in my family, making my parents very happy and proud. I’m also a very successful business owner. We’ve grown our company from one State to 11 States. I’m a very hard worker. I’ve always paid my taxes. I’ve never been arrested. I’ve never done drugs, but I’ve gotten a few speeding tickets in my day. What you need to know about me is I’m a very regular person.
// partial response{"needs": {"conservative": 74.26351907779349,"curiosity": 17.42638362795728,"excitement": 9.530917749551895,}}
This sample scores quite high in conservative, at 74.2, indicating that the speaker is likely to hold conservative values and might tend to be resistant to change, preferring to live within the boundaries what they are used to. Meanwhile, curiosity scores quite low at 17.4, indicating that the speaker is not someone who enjoys exploring concepts that are unfamiliar to them or that might be out of their comfort zone.
Similarly, the speaker scores very low in excitement, at just 9.5, which indicates that they may not have the need for much energetic activity, whether it be physical, social, or mental.