Maslow's Hierarchy Of Needs

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, and its use as a Motivational Theory in the Dawn of Connectivity

Introduction

Various Motivational theories have gained prestige and critique over the past decade, but one that remains influential and arguably relevant to this day is Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. This essay will look to analyse this renowned hierarchy and to what extent it addresses motivation successfully in relation to three concepts, namely the concepts of emotional meaning, social connectivity and social digital technologies. In order to explore how these interact, the essay will look at the actions and examples of retail brand John Lewis, and how their Christmas campaign addresses the aforementioned concepts and motivates consumers into purchasing.

Maslow’s ‘hierarchy of needs’ is a motivational theory first introduced by Abraham Maslow in 1943, which deducts that human needs can be divided into five tiers and organised in a hierarchical

This idea is mirrored greatly in Maslow’s model, where the first four levels of needs can be described as deficiency needs, which must be fulfilled before an individual can grow. Within this concept there can be found many critiques.

One critique of Maslow can be found in Hanley and Abell, who argue that the model is guilty of “generally categorizing love and belongingness needs as deficiency motives” (2002, p39), and thus not recognising the possibility for growth through these stages. This argument describes how the idea of relatedness and connectedness is underemphasised in Maslow’s model, it is seen only as a stepping stone to self-actualisation, where social connectedness will then be diminished as the individual has reached full potential within their