The Human Psychology of Timeshare and Why They Call To Us

The blog, Company Founder, posted an interesting piece this week reminding the business world, “Don’t Forget Maslow In Your Marketing.”

As you recall from some point in your life when you read or studied psychology, Abraham Maslow was an American psychologist credited with founding an approach to understanding behavior that came to be known as Humanistic Psychology. A fundamental of this school of thought is the Hierarchy of Needs in which Maslow identified the objectives that our human nature drives us to fulfill and the sequence in which we prioritize these needs.

Our instinctual needs and the order in which we seek to fill them are:

1. Physiological: food, water, shelter, clothing.
2. Security: safety from physical danger.
3. Love and Affiliation: love, belonging and intimacy.
4. Esteem: the need to feel unique and have self-esteem.
5. Purpose: the feeling of meaning to our existence.
6. Self-actualization.

But What Does Hierarchy of Needs have to do with Timeshare?

Although timeshare is not about filling our basic instinctual need for shelter, amazingly, it speaks to many of the next 5 levels in the human hierarchy of need. Buying timeshare gives us a sense of security in that we have provided for our need to relax and restore ourselves in a way that carves out a space for vacation in our lives, no matter what the future may bring.

While some timeshare owners may enjoy vacationing alone, most of us vacation with our families or our closest friends. We use the space in our lives created by our vacation ‘escape’ to show our love to our families, to bask in their affection, and to create an oasis despite the hectic demands of the world.

Timeshares allow us to feel special. Vacation ownership lets us indulge our need for luxury, pampering, and retreat while joining the ‘elite’ group of persons who own vacation property… even if we only own it one week at a time. Through timesharing, we can travel to new and sometimes exotic destinations, explore, and achieve both stimulation, and mental downtime. And because vacation ownership is literally a gift we give ourselves and our families, it serves as a way to remind us of all we have accomplished and all we deserve.

Please be sure to read Paul Morin’s blog post in its entirety. His ideas regarding Maslow and how businesses can and should market to the “inner you” are very interesting.