What's there in it for me?

In the early 1980s I heard that a customer always buys the benefit of a product. That made me interested, and I wanted to learn what a customer benefits is. With this knowledge I could probably improve my skills as a salesman and achieve better results. But there was also another interesting question that this matter raised. How many benefits are there? Thousands, hundreds, tens, or less? I started to look for the answers in the literature. After looking through numerous marketing books and articles, I recognized that customer benefit is one of the main concepts. Nevertheless, I could not find a satisfactory description of customer benefits, or an answer to the number of customer benefits.

This was the starting point for my study. And I'm happy to share the results of my work with you now. I have considered both the B2C and B2B environment in the results. Consumers and companies experience the same benefits, but there can be a difference in the sources of the benefits, and there can also be different emphasis of the benefits. In B2B selling you need to take a note of all the various needs of the actors in the supply chain besides the needs of the end customer.

I have developed a model in which the concept of 'customer benefit' is clearly defined, and all the potential customer benefits are listed and grouped. The four level model (source, rational, emotional, and core level) gives understanding of the numerous processes (based on material sources, sources in logistics, and social sources) that can lead to a customer benefit. It allows easy identification of any customer benefit both in the B2B and the B2C environment. Simultaneously, it is possible to recognize lacking or weak customer benefits, which enables planning and implementing of improvements in a product, a service, or in an operation. The model also provides an excellent platform for developing customer-oriented activities, and evident arguments of any products and service products. Furthermore, the mod