What's my motivation?
Editor's note: Sergey Veselovsky has spent more than 25 years in applied marketing research, turning complex quantitative data into decisions companies can act on. His work – spanning new product design, value proposition, persona development, pricing, consumer experience and marketing strategy – has shaped major strategic investment decisions for some of the world’s largest organizations. He is a partner at Research Etc. and a lecturer at the University of Prince Edward Island, Canada. Find Veselovsky on LinkedIn.
Companies invest heavily in understanding customer needs, yet translating those needs into clear product, pricing and marketing decisions remains difficult. Existing approaches – including Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, jobs-to-be-done, means-end chains, self-determination theory and identity-based motivation – each explain an important part of customer motivation. But most focus on either what customers are trying to achieve or how deeply that motivation matters. What is often missing is a practical way to combine both dimensions, measure them consistently and use them to guide strategy.
Need architecture was developed to address this gap. Its central contribution is that it separates customer needs into two dimensions: need domain – what the customer is ultimately seeking (such as safety, status, freedom) and need level – how deeply that motivation is experienced (such as functional, emotional, identity).
Together, need domain and need level define a customer’s motivational territory – the need space a product or a brand can choose to occupy. Every downstream decision – from personas and product design to pricing and customer experience – flows from the motivational territory an organization chooses to occupy.
What customers are seeking
Need domains describe the underlying motivation shaping customer demand. Examples include those shown in Table 1.
Most products do not operate within a single need domain. They typically have one primary domain – the dominant motivation that defines their core strategic territory – supported by one or more secondary domains that reinforce credibility, differentiation or adoption.
Customers may pursue the same need domain at very different levels (Table 2). Levitt famously observed that people do not want a quarter-inch drill; they want a quarter-inch hole. The need architecture approach extends this logic further. The hole itself (the functional level of the need) may simply be a solution to a deeper need. The real need may be to hang a picture (task level), make a home feel warm and personal (emotional level) or be a good homeowner (identity level). The deeper the level, the less the product competes only on features and the more it competes on emotional outcomes, identity and belonging.
Need domains and need levels work together to define a customer’s motivational territory. The example in Table 3 illustrates motivational territories for a financial services category. Rows show what customers are trying to achieve (need domains); columns show how deeply that motivation is experienced (need levels). Each cell is a distinct territory with its own strategic implications, expressed as [need domain] @ [need level].
For example, a brand might choose to compete at control @ emotional. That single choice shapes every downstream decision. Its competitors are brands that help customers feel financially stable, not those focused on excitement or belonging. Its value proposition, pricing and customer experience must all reinforce that emotional promise. The motivational territory a brand chooses ultimately determines how it competes.
Why does this matter? Customers may share the same need domain but occupy very different need levels. Treating them as a single segment masks important differences in product expectations, pricing sensitivity and customer experience. A customer-needs framework is only useful if it leads to better strategic decisions.
Case study
A proof of concept utilizing a nationally representative sample of Canadian consumers illustrates how this methodology moves beyond superficial product features to isolate underserved market segments.
A study was fielded in May 2026 with a nationally representative Canadian sample of n = 500 respondents who indicated they would be open to a prepaid card. Need domains were measured with a MaxDiff exercise; need levels were coded from AI-guided interviews conducted within the same study. (Figures are directional and intended to demonstrate the methodology rather than to size the market.)
As in other markets, most prepaid cards in Canada all look the same. Whether for budgeting, travel or gifting they compete on a similar mix of features, fees and use cases. But people don’t choose products based only on features. They choose them because they satisfy underlying human motivations.
We mapped those motivations across the market and found something surprising: the single-largest customer motivation – shared by one in five consumers – is barely addressed by today’s offerings.
Prepaid card need architecture
The need architecture matrix is category-independent. The following example applies the same methodology to identify motivational territories within the market for prepaid cards in Canada.
Step 1 – Measure need domains using MaxDiff: Need architecture is built around 14 fundamental need domains representing broad human motivations. Because these domains are universal, they must be translated into category-specific expressions before they can be measured. All need domain statements were intentionally written at the functional need level to avoid introducing need level bias into the MaxDiff exercise. For example, the safety domain was expressed as “Safety: I want to protect my primary bank or card when making purchases online,” and the control domain as “Control: I want to manage my spending and stay within my budget.”
The five leading need domains selected by respondents for a prepaid card are shown in Figure 1.
Step 2 – Code need levels from AI-guided interviews: The dominant need level was identified by coding AI-guided interviews conducted after the MaxDiff exercise. The interviews focused on the need domains each respondent selected most often during the MaxDiff exercise, exploring why respondents made those choices to determine the depth at which the underlying need is experienced (functional, task, emotional, identity or ecosystem).
Viewed in order of demand, the map (Table 4) tells a clear story. Different need domains gravitate toward different need levels and the largest pockets of demand are concentrated in a handful of cells.
Safety @ emotional (21.1%) – by far the largest single cell. Safety is experienced as reassurance, not as a feature.
“I do some online transactions and I’m always afraid of cyberattacks on my card. It would be nice to have peace of mind and the card not linked at all to my bank account.”
Caregiving @ task (12.5%) – caregiving is expressed as a convenient way to provide for others.
“I usually give gift cards to friends & family, so they can purchase whatever they want. It makes things easier for me, eliminates the cost of shipping & presents that don’t fit or the recipient would never use.”
Control @ task (9.4%) – control is about managing spending with less effort.
“As a student I have a hard time with budgeting and often end up spending too much money. If I had a prepaid card I think it would help me better manage my finances.”
Freedom @ functional (7.7%) – freedom shows up as practical travel utility.
“I think it’s very helpful to be able to load multiple currencies especially for traveling to different countries in a short period of time without the hassle of carrying a bunch of different currencies.”
Self-expression @ identity (4.3%) and emotional (3.8%) – the only domain that reaches the identity level.
“Gambling is my thing and I like keeping it on its own card, separate from my everyday life. It’s my own little world.”
In short, several need-specific opportunities emerge – safety @ emotional, caregiving @ task, control @ task, freedom @ functional and self-expression @ identity and emotional. We can now compare this demand side with a supply-side reading of the Canadian market.
Step 3 – Overlaying the supply side: The previous step identified where customer demand is concentrated. The next step is to compare that demand landscape with the current supply of prepaid card offerings.
The supply side reflects a market-level analysis of the current Canadian prepaid card market. Each publicly marketed card was coded to its primary motivational territory (domain @ level) based on its publicly communicated value proposition. This is an assessment of brand positioning rather than consumer perception and is intended to illustrate the methodology rather than provide a definitive classification of the market.
Based on this analysis, current market supply is concentrated in three of the five major demand territories:
Control @ task and functional (BMO Prepaid, EQ Bank Card, Neo Money, KOHO)
Freedom @ functional (Wise, Cash Passport, Wealthsimple Cash)
Caregiving @ task (Vanilla gift cards, Neo JA card)
Concrete opportunities
The two clearest demand-supply mismatches point to concrete opportunities.
Safety @ emotional is the single largest underserved cell. Very few brands have built their value proposition around emotional reassurance. Most emphasize security features such as encryption and fraud protection but few position themselves around the emotional promise of “the card that lets you stop worrying online.”
Self-expression @ identity represents a genuine white-space opportunity. The underlying need already exists but no dedicated prepaid card currently addresses it directly. Even the Joker Mastercard has expanded beyond its original focus on gambling and gaming. Instead, consumers satisfy this need indirectly through generic prepaid cards used for privacy rather than self-expression.
Key takeaway: Most prepaid cards look the same because they compete within the same motivational territories. The greatest opportunities emerge where customer demand exceeds competitive supply.
This case study demonstrates how need architecture helps organizations identify those opportunities. By combining MaxDiff with AI-guided interviews, it measures both what customers are trying to achieve and how deeply those motivations matter. Overlaying customer demand with current market supply reveals the motivational territories that remain underserved.
In the Canadian prepaid card market, that analysis uncovered two opportunities: an emotionally positioned safety proposition and an identity-driven self-expression proposition.
The same approach can be applied to virtually any category. Identify the motivational territories customers seek, compare them with the territories competitors occupy and build products, pricing and experiences around the greatest demand-supply mismatch.
This workflow summarizes the need architecture process – from identifying customer motivations to translating them into actionable strategic decisions:
Need domain→MaxDiff→AI-guided interviews→need level→motivational territory→demand–supply gap→strategy
Need architecture is the foundation of the five-module demand architecture framework:
- Need architecture – What motivates demand?
- Persona architecture – Who creates demand?
- Product and value proposition architecture – What should we build?
- Pricing architecture – How should we capture value?
- Experience architecture – How do we reinforce long-term customer commitment?
Learn more about the framework at demandarchitecture.org and read the full need architecture methodology at demandarchitecture.org/need-architecture.