Customer needs

4.1 Customer needs

A customer need is a lack of something valueable that the actor wants to acquire.

For profit-and-loss-responsible actors, it is the need to generate sufficient revenue to survive and thrive.
For non-profits and government institutions, it is the need to be compliant with their mission.
For consumers, it is a state of felt deprivation of some basic satisfaction, also called consumer need [5].

A customer need is visualized by a bulls-eye connected to the interfaces needed to satisfy this need (figure 4.1). In the market segment, each of the travelers in the segment has the need to travel.

Figure 4.1:An actor and a market segment with a need.

Needs are goals, and the name of a need should express this goal. We recommend choosing a name that prefixed with “Need to” yields a meaningful noun. For example, a Traveler has the need to travel, which makes “Travel” a good name for the need.

To understand a value network, we must understand the customer need it aims to satisfy. Jointly, the actors in a value network offer a value object to a customer. When the customer acquires value objects to satisfy its need, a collection of economic transactions in the network is triggered. It is the performance of these transactions by which the network can survive and thrive.