Exploring How the Design Hierarchy of Needs Explains Correlations Between Design Decisions and Online Customer Review Ratings

Abstract

Abstract Understanding and meeting customer needs plays a significant role in the success of released products. Consumer shopping behavior has also moved toward an online experience, where customers learn of, read about, and make selections based on what they see online. Customer reviews offer a wide range of commentary about the shopping, delivery, and product use experience. The comments specific to product use can provide significant insights into where a product is failing to meet (or exceeds) expectations. In this paper, we establish a frame that the impact of design decisions is often reflected in these comments, and that the star rating a product receives can be correlated to how well a product fulfills the Design Hierarchy of Needs. The Design Hierarchy of Needs is an adaptation of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, where needs are associated with the levels of functionality, reliability, usability, proficiency, and creativity. The tenet of the Design Hierarchy of Needs is that a design must first serve lower-level needs (functionality) before addressing higher-level needs (creativity). In this paper, we explore five hypotheses that are posed with the goal of exploring how the Design Hierarchy of Needs can be used for explaining online review star ratings by identifying where products fail to address (or exceed) needs. Reviews from five products across multiple star ratings are coded, and these codes are analyzed to determine the frequency of categories where negative comments about needs are being addressed. We show that the number of negative comments addressing functionality and reliability decrease as the star ratings increase, and that 1- and 2-star reviews are dominated by negative comments about these need levels. We also find that as the star ratings increase, negative comments are focused on the hierarchical levels of proficiency and usability, reflecting the tradeoffs that customers perceive themselves making while using the product. Finally, we also show that positive comments about proficiency and creativity primarily exists only in 4- and 5-star reviews. We believe that these findings can help drive conversations around design decisions when considering the extent to which needs should be addressed, particularly when tied to product cost, and the tradeoffs that are made when addressing mid-tier levels of the hierarchy. This work further establishes that design decisions must be made in the context of a market system, where need fulfilment, cost and performance, and the online shopping experience must be simultaneously considered.