Where Does Market Demand Come From? See People's Needs, and You'll Know Whose Problems You Can Solve

01Introduction: at its best, starting a business means seeing a need and wanting to change it

The last article covered STP positioning. While positioning, you also think hard about what the market actually needs.

I think the best state for starting or running your own business is this: from your own experience or needs, you see something, you want to change it, and you have the drive to solve that problem.

It doesn't have to be only about you. It can be the people around you, what you see in society, in different countries, anything in the world you want to change. To me that is what entrepreneurship looks like at its best: hoping to make the world a little better. Starting from there, you have the drive to do what you want to do, and it feels meaningful.

02What is market demand? Back to human nature

Market demand is the problems a group of people want solved and the things they long for, plus what they're willing to pay for them. Needs come from people, so understanding needs means going back to human nature.

People in different industries, circles and environments need different things. Ambitious people who want to succeed look for more expertise, skills, knowledge and resources; people in fashion may want new trends, items and brands. That's a generalization, of course.

Others act from anxiety, worry and fear of the future. Long-term care, retirement villages you could book in advance, burial plots and insurance all belong here. People live within birth, aging, illness and death, the four seasons, and food, clothing, housing, transport, education and leisure. These are needs.

Look closely and you'll find positive needs, negative needs, needs born of worry, anxiety or greed, and hopes and love for one's children. So I always come back to this: we need to understand many different kinds of people. Start broadly, men or women, then narrow down to whether you solve their appearance, their understanding or something inner.

Need is not the same as buying power

Marketing often separates needs, wants and demands, demand being a want backed by the ability to pay. That's what I meant in the last article by "needing something doesn't mean paying for it." Psychologist Abraham Maslow's 1943 hierarchy of needs also describes needs in layers, from physiological and safety needs up to belonging, esteem and self-actualization. These theories help, but in the end you have to go back to the person in front of you.

03Nicole's Q&A: seeing needs comes from details

QDesire, fear, love, curiosity, worry, greed: which drives customers most?

Ten-plus years ago, marketing loved fear appeals: images, words or videos that scared you about aging, illness, death and separation until you felt "I need this."

I rarely push that now. But honestly, negative emotions are still the easiest to move people with: fear, anxiety, desire. Time feels faster, everyone is busier and everyone seems more capable, so people hope to solve things by spending and take the shortest path to what they want. That's also why so many people get scammed.

I think what people want comes down to this: someone to give them more time, to solve their need or problem, or to give them emotional value.

QHow do you "see" a person's needs?

I usually start from myself. I'm naturally detail-oriented; the first time I meet someone I notice many details without trying: their expression, words and clothing. Traveling in different countries, I see many needs too, and notice my own.

Of course, I can be limited to the needs within my own understanding. So more often, I discover needs while serving and interacting with people: "Oh, so that's what they need."

I once had a client in a group chat who never said they couldn't follow, never replied and never shared ideas. After a while I realized the platform and system they used were different from everyone else's, so they simply couldn't see the messages, and they didn't want to look like they couldn't use it.

That taught me customers can run into problems at that level. The most important part of customer relationship management is to record customers' needs and improve next time. In the store, online or anywhere I meet the people I serve, I note the details they care about and refine things each time. It's never perfect at once, and you keep finding more needs along the way; we solve them one by one.

QAny examples where the owner thought customers wanted A, but they wanted B?

It happens a lot, because customers sometimes don't know what they want.

One brand I work with is in the religious and spiritual space. They often had customers who bought something and then called the office to talk for a long time. At first you wonder: are they doubting you, or the product? After a while we saw there were many customers like this.

The customers this brand attracts want emotional value and company: something to hold on to, a sense of reassurance. We realized that what the brand really sells is a ray of light for them in society and in daily life.

It changed me too. I try to be that light for others: when meeting clients, facing a crowd or making friends, I try to bring positive energy and hope. Without hope, how do you keep going? Spending time with positive people makes you feel much better as well.

Customers don't always buy the product itself. They buy what the product solves for them.

Q"In this market, whose needs can I meet?" How do you guide owners to answer?

We usually answer this while building the whole strategy: from SWOT and STP to 7P and 7C, the focus of the physical store and online channels, and the business model. Once that's done, the owner knows.

Then we review the tools they already have and what else they could do. Along the way the owner becomes clear about whose needs they can meet, with what method and what tools; who they are, where they come from and where they can go.

I usually do this with companies that come to me for strategy planning (not agency execution, but strategy planning itself). Many owners find it eye-opening: "So if I just add this one step to the process, I can see new room to grow."

QHow do seasons or life stages change needs?

Here's a local example. Taiwan has a dish called ginger duck hot pot. It appears around late September and sells until about February or March, roughly half a year. In those six months it serves a huge number of customers, then rests for the other half.

Fashion always chases the seasons; at each change you must clear stock or keep it until next year. Ingredients too: buying winter ingredients in summer costs more.

Life stages work the same way. When you're young you don't think about retirement, long-term care or a burial plot, or that you'll need medical care, insurance, a caregiver and money. All of these are tied to money. Once you know, shouldn't you prepare early? How do you plan in stages while you're young?

Same idea: life needs planning, and so does a business. A company's products and services exist to meet market demand, to solve the things that happen in the rhythms of people's lives.

Everything in front of you and everything in your home solves a problem for you. AI agents exist to solve not having enough time, struggling to bring things together, forgetting things, low efficiency and having to learn new skills. My first smartphone was an HTC. Before that we bought a camera, a phone and a game console separately; now one phone does it all.

Today I use AI to bring almost everything together: work details, workflows, schedules, daily reports and news. All of this changed because of people's needs, and society only moves forward. So when we solve other people's needs, it's no longer one-dimensional; it may be many-sided.

04How to apply it: keep a record of what customers care about

Seeing needs isn't about inspiration; it's about records. Start here:

1. Create a shared log: date, customer type, channel (store, LINE, phone, clinic), the detail they cared about, and how you responded.
2. Note the unspoken signals: never replying, asking the same thing repeatedly, long phone calls. These often mean a need isn't being met.
3. Review monthly: sort recurring details into "give time, solve a problem, give emotional value," and decide what to improve first next month.
4. Map seasons and life stages: list how your customers' needs change through the year and across life stages, and prepare 3–6 months ahead.

05FAQ

06Closing thoughts

Further reading