What's there in it for me?: Identifying customer benefits and utilizing the knowledge of customer benefits in marketing and selling

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 benefit 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.

The writer lives in Helsinki and has over 35 years experience in marketing and selling.