Hierachy Of Business Needs

2026-08-27

I really like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Especially sometimes when I feel down it is nice to remind myself that I have the bottom few bits of the hierarchy covered, having food, water, and shelter is really nice and I should be grateful for it everyday. Just now I made some oatmeal for myself and the kids and it is nice to have the dry goods in the house ready to use at any time. My dad’s parents lived through the great depression and my mom’s parents lived through Japanese interment and they must have thought often about the bottom parts of the hierarchy.

Here a link to the hierarchy.

Here are the needs from top to bottom:

And again I am thankful I take for granted the bottom two things and worry mainly about the top three.

But I was thinking about small businesses and thought there is kind of a hierarchy of business needs. This is just my ramblings and is very unscientific but I thought it might be useful.

Provide Value (or perceived value) (This is need number #1, the most necessary part of a business)

A business needs to provide, or seem to provide something to its users. This can be a wide range of things, usually a good or service. A good example would be the muffin company I talked about earlier, it providers its patrons with muffins. I cooked some oatmeal this morning, Quaker oats owns a bunch of farms somewhere and harvests oats, packages them, and sells them to Costco, which stores them, puts them in stores near me, where I can go and buy them.

Even things that are only kind of businesses, like con men or agencies like the DMV provide value or perceived value. A ponzi scheme makes its users think they are going to get rich quickly, and even if it is a lie (the ponzi scheme will run out of money eventually) the users perceive the value. At the DMV you can get a drivers license even if it sometimes takes a while.

Compete In The Market (Needs #2)

This applies to most businesses and is kind of fluid but most businesses have markets and compete with other businesses. There are some closed markets, there are some monopolies or duopolies or things like that but hopefully those are exceptions to the rule. the DMV has no competitor aside from other DMVs.

Again for the muffin company, if it sells muffins but there are other pastry shops nearby they all naturally compete and the muffin company must have some advantages in order to stay a business. It needs to be a little closer to your house, sell this delicious poppy seed almond muffin that you can’t find elsewhere, have a shorter line, or be a little cheaper. If the muffin company was worse in every way to a store next to it, it would fail quickly.

This could be similar