The Want to Need vs. The Need to Want


Do you first realize the need to go somewhere, and then get a taxi to take you somewhere. Or do you, after realizing that a taxi can take you somewhere, go somewhere?

Why do you feel the need to buy the most recent Adobe Illustrator? Did the, now, older version stop offering what you needed from it?

I think we are a good testimony that marketing, when well-done, yields profits.

I’m using Adobe CS3, but truth be told, the tasks that I use Photoshop CS3 for could be fulfilled by Photoshop 7.

This is how a need/tool relationship is supposed to be:

Workout what you need to do, and then, find tools that’ll help you realize what needs to be done. The need determines the tools, and not the other way around.

In many business models, the only way the company can increase its revenue and remain in business, is to get new clients. Or better still, sell an “improved” version of what they sold to John, to John.

Businesses like cellphone manufacturers have to bombard you with new feature after new feature, for their investors’ smiles to remain.

Initially, all a cellphone was, was a portable, mobile, and personal version of a telephone. However, today cellphones afford people an opportunity to watch TV in the comfort of their own pockets.

All it primarily needed to do was make and receive phone calls. Today, very few people would settle for a cellphone that doesn’t have a camera, internet and so forth.

What do you use your cellphone for? Do you use it because it fulfills your need or do need it because it promises features you’re willing to want to need?

Remember a time when we had no bottled water? Did tap water kill us? So, what made most of us prefer bottled water over tap water?

Like I said, if you already have a Nokia cellphone, the only way for Nokia to make more money out of you is to manufacture a need for you to want. Otherwise, why would you consider buying a new phone when you already have one?

The next time you have a few Rands that you don’t know what to do with, buy someone in need food, take a stranger out for lunch or go buy a book (your wisdom will thank me), instead of upgrading to a cellphone with just two more gigs of storage or a two-pixel-better camera.

(The hardest hurdle that you’ll have to jump, is overcoming what we were brainwashed to believe, … “To be happy, I must buy.”)




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— May 24, 2010.