ليش نشتري؟ من الحاجة إلى القرارWhy Do We Buy? From Need to Decision

IntroHunger Got Him Out of the House, but It Didn't Choose the Restaurant

This small story holds three different things that most of us mix up. There is a need: Yasser is hungry and his body is asking for food. There is a specific purchase: one particular meal from one particular restaurant at one particular hour. And there is the reason Yasser gives afterwards, which is not the reason that actually decided it.

A note before we go on: Yasser and the other names in this article are invented characters used to explain the idea, and the numbers in their stories are examples, not statistics. Every researcher or book I mention is a real source you will find at the end of the article, and each time I say what kind it is: an academic paper, an academic book, a book for general readers, an argument (economic, philosophical or social), or my own opinion. And any classification that comes from me, I say plainly that it is my own classification, not a research finding.

1Three Words We Mix Up

Your neighbor in the building never gave his housing a thought all year. Then the landlord told him he wouldn't renew the lease, and suddenly housing became the most important thing in his life. The need for a home had been there all along, but he didn't feel it until it was threatened.

Here are three things we need to keep apart, because mixing them up is behind most of the arguments about what is "essential":

• The need itself: constant, and it never disappears. Food, shelter, safety, belonging.
• The feeling of the need: this is what comes and goes, and it is what moves a purchase.
• The satisfier: the product or way that meets the need. Food is essential, but a SAR 35 meal from a delivery app is not; it is one satisfier among many.

This distinction comes from the Chilean economist Manfred Max-Neef academic book. His idea is that human needs are few, limited in number and classifiable, and they are the same for all people in all periods. What changes from one culture to another, and from one era to another, is the ways we meet them, which are the satisfiers. He identified nine needs: subsistence, protection, affection, understanding, participation, leisure, creation, identity and freedom. And he himself says his table is neither absolute nor complete.

Back to Yasser. His need is food, and that is constant. What changed that night was the satisfier: the freezer food, cooking, the shawarma, or the drive-through meal. Each of them meets the same need at a different price in time, effort and money.

Why does this distinction matter? Because a seller doesn't sell the need; a seller sells a satisfier, and all competition is between satisfiers. And because the question "is food essential?" has an undebatable yes, while "is the app meal essential?" is a completely different question. Most of the argument happens because we ask the first and answer the second.

When does the distinction fade? When the satisfier has no substitute. For a person with type 1 diabetes the need is health, but insulin is a satisfier with no alternative, so it becomes essential itself. The distinction works only as far as there are choices.

In one lineThe need is constant and few; the feeling of it comes and goes; and the satisfier is what we actually buy.

2Needs Aren't Only Physical

A young man in his first job buys a decent suit on installments for a job interview. From outside we say luxury. He sees it as the condition for the door to open.

The common idea is that the essentials are food, shelter and medicine, and everything else is luxury. That idea counts only the body. And there are three pieces of evidence against it.

The linen shirt

Adam Smith, in The Wealth of Nations (1776) economic argument, says of the linen shirt that, strictly speaking, it is not a necessity of life. But a respectable laborer of his day would be ashamed to appear in public without one, because the custom of the country made going without it a disgrace. So for Smith, the necessary includes whatever would leave a person disgraced in his society if he lacked it, even if he wouldn't die without it. And the idea is about five centuries older than Smith: Thomas Aquinas (around 1271), in the Summa Theologiae philosophical argument, distinguished between what is necessary because without it you cannot live, and what is necessary because without it you cannot live in keeping with your social station.

Television before food

In Poor Economics (Banerjee and Duflo, 2011) book for general readers based on field research, a poor man in a Moroccan village, who owned a television and a satellite dish, told the researchers that television mattered more to him than food. From outside we say his priorities are wrong. My reading (mine, not the book's) is that a life with nothing to break the boredom and the isolation is a heavy one, and that the television meets real needs for him: leisure, and a connection to the world.

Maslow's pyramid as a ladder

Maslow's pyramid is usually presented as a ladder: you don't step up until you have finished the step below. Maslow himself (1943) wrote that needs are met partially and at the same time, and the pyramid drawing came from others years later, as far as I have read. In a more recent study academic paper, Tay and Diener (2011) examined Gallup World Poll data from 123 countries between 2005 and 2010. They found that needs are indeed universal, but the order in which they are met has little bearing on well-being. People benefit from meeting needs such as relationships and respect even when their basic needs are incomplete. Diener himself says Maslow's theory is largely correct, so the result is not that it is wrong; it is that a strict ordering is not supported.

And there is a limit we need to know: social embarrassment is real, but it is sometimes manufactured, and companies can create it. We come back to this in Part Three.

In one lineNeeds are wider than the body, and luxury is usually an expensive satisfier of a real need, not a need in itself.

3How Different Traditions Have Classified Needs

Ask three of your friends: what is essential in your life? You will get three lists. One says coffee, one says internet, and one says both are a luxury. Each is working with a different definition of the essential. People in many cultures have been thinking about this question for centuries. Here are six of them, and what each said, in brief. These are ideas about life and needs in general, not about the consumer, and borrowing them here to explain buying is my own analogy.

Al-Shatibi (Islamic legal theory): degrees

Al-Shatibi (died 790 AH, about 1388 CE), in Al-Muwafaqat Islamic legal theory, arranged the purposes of Islamic law in three degrees. The necessities: what, if lost, would break the order of life, and they are five: the protection of religion, life, intellect, lineage and property. The needs: what, if lost, leaves people in hardship and difficulty. The refinements: the finer points of custom and the perfecting of things.

Epicurus (Greek philosophy): the empty desire

Epicurus, in his Letter to Menoeceus philosophical argument, divided desires into three: natural and necessary, natural but not necessary, and empty (those that come from an idea with no basis in the body or in the mind).

Mencius (Chinese thought): livelihood before stability

Mencius (fourth century BCE), in the chapter "Teng Wen Gong I" of his book philosophical argument, said that ordinary people who have a constant livelihood have a steady heart, and those who lack it do not, and when the heart is not steady, conduct runs loose.

The four aims of life (Indian tradition): an order, not a ban

The Indian tradition names four aims of life intellectual tradition: "dharma," duty and ethics; "artha," wealth and the means of living; "kama," desire and pleasure; and "moksha," liberation. Wealth and pleasure are legitimate aims here, not sins, but duty takes precedence when they conflict.

Keynes: a need with a ceiling and a need without one

Keynes, in his essay "Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren" (1930) economic argument, distinguished between absolute needs, which we feel whatever the condition of others and which can in the end be satisfied, and relative needs, which we feel because meeting them lifts us above others, and which may never end.

Doyal and Gough: the harm test

Doyal and Gough (1991) academic book define a basic need through harm: it is what, if absent, causes serious harm. They name two basic needs: physical health, and autonomy.

In one lineThe thinkers we looked at differ on the lists, but they give needs degrees, and the most useful yardstick for telling them apart is harm-if-absent.

4Three Questions to Test What's "Essential"

Reem buys coffee from a café every morning for SAR 18, and she has a machine at home that makes a cup for about SAR 3. Her friend tells her: you're wasting money. Reem says: coffee is essential for me. Both are speaking without a yardstick. Here is a practical test. It is my own classification, not a research finding, and it builds on the idea of harm in Doyal and Gough:

1. What need does this serve?
2. If it were gone, what harm would follow, when would it show, and can it be repaired?
3. Is there another satisfier for the same need, and is it cheaper at its full price?

Applying it to sleep

The need: rest, health, and the ability to work and think. The harm if it is absent: it shows within days in concentration and mood, and in the long run in health, and some of it can be repaired and some cannot. The alternative satisfier: none, because sleep has no substitute. The verdict: essential.

And to Reem's coffee

The need is real and has more than one layer: caffeine that wakes her up, a moment of calm before work, and a ritual that starts the day. The harm if it is absent: a mild headache some days and the loss of a small ritual, and it passes quickly. An alternative exists: coffee at home, which is cheaper on the price tag. But the third question says "at its full price," so we do the sum.

Cheaper on the price tag is not always cheaper

Reem knows that coffee at home, with the making and the cleaning up, takes her half an hour, while at the café she has it in five minutes. So she pays SAR 15 more (18 minus 3) to save 25 minutes, which is about SAR 36 for every hour she saves. The real question is not "which is cheaper?" but "is my hour worth more than SAR 36 to me?" On a morning with a tight start to work, the answer is probably yes, and the café is cheaper at its full price. On a day off, when she enjoys making her own coffee, the making is part of the pleasure and home coffee wins.

This is what we call the full price: not the figure on the receipt, but everything you pay to get the thing, in money, time, effort, risk and the cost of backing out if you don't like it. And the time you pay has a name in economics, opportunity cost, meaning the value of the best other thing you could have done with the same time.

The same sum applies to bigger decisions. Khalid found an apartment an hour outside Riyadh, with rent lower than in central Riyadh. But the trip to work and back is two hours every day: about 44 hours a month if he works 22 days, not counting fuel, car maintenance and the wear of the road. The cheaper rent is real, but is it cheaper at its full price? It depends on what those hours are worth to Khalid, whether he can use them, and whether the rent difference covers them. The numbers here are examples, but the same sum applies to anyone choosing where to live. And if the sum is that simple, why do we get it wrong so often? That is the question of section seven.

What does the test give us?

It turns "essential" from a property of the thing into a relationship between four things: the thing, the need, the harm if it is absent, and the alternatives at their full price. That is why the same thing can be essential for one person and not for another. A car is essential for an employee who lives far from work with no public transport, and not essential for someone who lives in a walkable neighborhood. And for Khalid, the decision to live far away is itself what made the car essential.

And the test doesn't judge Reem. If the need she names in the first question is "ten minutes with my friend at the café before work," then coffee at home doesn't meet the same need at all, and the answer to the third question changes. The test is only as honest as you are in naming the need.

And the result isn't always yes or no. It comes out in roughly three degrees, which is close to al-Shatibi's idea: essential (sleep), a real need with alternatives where the verdict is a calculation (Reem's coffee), and something you can't name a need for at all. The third degree is the one that deserves a pause before paying.

In one lineThe essential is not a property of the thing; it is a relationship between the thing, the need, the harm if it is absent, and the alternatives at their full price.

5What Decides How Strong a Need Is?

After a heavy meal, even the finest dish doesn't tempt you. Two hours earlier you would have taken anything. Same person, same food, and the strength of the need changed. So strength is not a property of a type of need. It is the result of three things:

• How deprived you are of it right now. Hunger is the strongest thing when you are hungry, and after eating it goes quiet. And its effect spills past food: in five laboratory and field studies, hungry people wanted nonfood objects more and took more of them, such as binder clips, whether they were free or paid for, although they did not like them any more (Xu, Schwarz and Wyer, 2015) academic paper. That is a laboratory result, and I don't know of a replication in Saudi Arabia.
• Whether you feel it now. A need you don't notice moves nothing, however big it is. Why some needs go quiet is the subject of section seven.
• Meaning and identity can overpower the body. In many cultures people choose hunger because meaning is stronger for them than its signal: the Ramadan fast among Muslims, the Yom Kippur fast among Jews, Lent among Christians, and the hunger strike as protest, as Gandhi used it. And parents go hungry so their children can eat.

Why does this matter? If strength were a fixed property of a type of need, we could rank needs once and be done, and that is what the pyramid tries to do. But because strength changes with deprivation, feeling and meaning, the same person ranks their needs differently in two hours of the same day.

When does a fixed ranking hold? Under acute deprivation: severe hunger, thirst, or danger to life. There the body usually overrides everything else, and choices narrow. In that range, and only there, the picture of the pyramid is closer to reality.

In one lineThe strength of a need is set by deprivation, feeling and meaning, not by its type.

6The Rhythm of Needs, and the Business Each Rhythm Creates

Hunger comes every day, the internet bill is drawn from your account every month, marriage comes once in a lifetime, and your teeth decay in silence. Four needs with four rhythms, and each rhythm changes the shape of the business that serves it. This is my own classification, not a research finding.

A special case: an intermittent need and a continuous payment

Hind signed up to a gym for SAR 150 a month. Her need for it is intermittent: she goes for two months of the year and then stops. But the subscription renews automatically. Here, continuing needs no reason, and stopping is what needs a reason: she has to remember, open the app, find the button, and decide. That is the power of the default.

Johnson and Goldstein (2003) academic paper compared effective consent rates for organ donation between countries that treat a person as a donor unless they opt out, and countries that treat a person as a non-donor unless they register. The gap between the two groups was very large, close to 60 percentage points according to their follow-up paper (2004). These are consent rates, not actual donations, because actual donation is decided by the family and the circumstances of death. And since countries differ in many things other than the rule, they added an online experiment (161 participants): when the default was "donor," about 82% agreed, and when it was "non-donor," 42% did.

When does the default stop working? In my judgment, when the payment becomes noticeable: a notification, a large bill, or an event that makes you review your spending. That is my inference, not a study's result.

In one lineEvery rhythm of need creates a type of business: one that lives on habit, one that lives on subscription, one with a single window, and one that sells something nobody feels a need for.

7Why We Buy the Non-Essential and Neglect the Essential

Yasser's meal is a clear example: the need is essential, and the satisfier he chose costs more than cooking at home. His friend might say to him: "you're wasting money, you should have cooked." But before we judge, there are two different questions:

1. Is the cheap way really cheap? With Reem's coffee and Khalid's housing we saw that the answer is sometimes no.
2. And if it really is cheap, what makes it hard for us?

Research in psychology and behavioral economics works on both questions. We walk through it in six findings: the first and second answer the first question, and the rest answer the second.

There is also a factor from the market's side, not ours: advertising, and whether it creates our wants or only introduces us to them. That is a real disagreement between Galbraith and Hayek, and we take it up in Part Three.

In one lineWhat looks cheap may be expensive at its full price, and what really is cheap we avoid because its cost is immediate, its effort mental, its benefit far away, and it never reminds us of itself.

1The Need Is Felt Now

Muneera's home internet has been slow for months. She complained about it more than once and did nothing. Then, on the day of an online exam, the connection dropped in the middle of the test, and the next day she bought a new router. Why now? The speed had been slow for ages, so the need had not changed. What changed is that an event made the need felt, and strongly. That triggering event is the first question we ask about any purchase: why now?

Why does a need require an event? Because the current state has force. We saw it with the gym subscription, and William Samuelson and Richard Zeckhauser (1988) academic paper showed it in choosing too: in their experiments, and in faculty members' choices of health plans and retirement programs, people leaned strongly toward staying with what they already had, even in important decisions. One explanation is that staying costs no effort, while changing costs effort and carries the risk of regret. So a weak, continuous need doesn't break the current state on its own.

That means an event works in one of two ways (my own classification, not a research finding): it raises the cost of staying, like Muneera's disconnection in the exam or your neighbor's eviction notice at the start of Part One, or it lowers the cost of changing, like a discount, or a friend who tried it and says setting it up is easy.

Two more factors come with it: mood and attention. Yasser himself, if he had got home at seven feeling rested, might have cooked. And this means, in my observation and not in a study, that the one who wins is often the one who is there at the moment of the event, not the best in the abstract. And when don't we need an event? When the need is acute and always felt, such as severe hunger.

In one lineNeed alone doesn't set a purchase moving; the event that breaks the current state and makes it felt now does.

2Buying Beats the Other Ways

Ahmed is about to repaint his apartment. His options: paint it himself, have his cousin paint it for free, pay a painter, postpone until he moves, or put up with the old color. Buying doesn't win automatically. It has to beat all of these. And three forces explain why it wins so often:

• Specialization. Adam Smith (1776) economic argument says the division of labor raises output: a painter who paints every day is faster and better than someone who paints once in a lifetime.
• Opportunity cost. Ahmed's time has a price, and it is his day off. David Ricardo (1817) economic argument added that even if you are better than everyone at everything, you gain by focusing on what you are relatively best at and buying the rest. The term itself came decades after Ricardo, but the idea of comparing alternatives rests on the same logic.
• Transaction costs. Ronald Coase (1937) academic paper noticed that using the market itself has a cost. Ahmed has to find a painter he trusts, agree on a price, check the work, and worry about the deposit. In Coase's phrase these are the "cost of using the price mechanism," later called transaction costs. That is why many people ask the cousin first.

Free help isn't free

Ahmed's cousin painted the apartment and took nothing. But Ahmed knows he now owes him, and that if his cousin asks for a favor a year from now he won't be able to say no. Marcel Mauss (1923–1924) social argument wrote that a gift creates three obligations: to give, to receive and to return. That is why people sometimes prefer to pay a stranger so as not to owe a relative. I'm not saying social debt is bad; it is the very bond that makes a relationship a relationship. But it is a price, and we have to count it.

And when does making it yourself win? When the need keeps recurring, or you need something fitted to you that isn't available ready-made, or you enjoy making it.

In one lineBuying doesn't win because it is the best in the abstract; it wins because, at its full price, it beats doing it yourself, free help, postponing and putting up with it.

3This Seller Beats the Others

Yasser has decided to buy, so the question becomes: why this restaurant? There are six forces, and any one of them can decide it.

1. The full price and friction

The shawarma is SAR 22 and the drive-through burger is SAR 20. A difference of two riyals doesn't matter. What matters is the full price we met in section four: for Yasser, a quarter of an hour hunting for a parking spot, a walk at night, and the chance of a crowd, all at a moment when his energy was at its lowest. This is where friction shows: what decides is often not the strongest desire but the least friction. Yasser's strongest desire was the shawarma, but the parking raised its full price. Friction matters less for large, rare purchases such as a home or a car, because the sum is worth more effort.

2. Bounded rationality

Herbert Simon (1955 and 1956) academic paper said that the human mind is limited, and time and information are scarce, so people search until they find an option that is "good enough" and stop, instead of searching for the best. This is called bounded rationality. Maha is looking for a hotel and stops at the third one because it meets what she wants in price, rating and location, not because it is the best. And my own observation, not Simon's, is that the search gets longer the bigger the sum.

3. Habit

Habit isn't a separate type of purchase; it is a way of deciding that runs through all the types: every repeated purchase moves gradually from a decision to a habit. In studies by Wood and colleagues (Wood, Quinn and Kashy, 2002) academic paper, participants recorded their actions every hour for a day or two, and found that between 35% and 43% of them were habits, and that in most of those actions their minds were on something else. These are everyday actions, not only purchases. Fahd buys his coffee from the same café every morning without deciding. And Verplanken and Wood (2006) academic paper showed that a change of context, such as moving house or a new job, breaks habits and reopens the decision. So when Fahd moved to another neighborhood, he chose again.

4. Trust

George Akerlof (1970) academic paper wrote about "the market for lemons," a lemon being a car with a hidden defect. If the seller knows the defect and the buyer doesn't, the buyer assumes the worst and pays less, so the owner of a good car withdraws and the bad ones stay. That explains part of why many people buy a used car from a known dealer at a higher price than from an individual: they are paying for trust and a warranty. By the same logic, an "original" charger at half price raises suspicion: the seller knows whether it is genuine and you don't, so the low price itself becomes a warning.

5. Price as information

Friedrich Hayek (1945) academic paper said the knowledge a decision needs is scattered among millions of people and no one holds all of it, and that price carries from it a signal about scarcity that lets people act without knowing the reason. Take flight tickets during holidays: when the price rises, the traveler doesn't need to know whether the cause is a school break, a conference or a match. It is enough that seats have become scarcer, so he decides: fly at the higher price, change the date, or postpone. And note: Hayek is talking about scarcity and coordination, not about quality. The difference between this and the charger: with flight tickets the information is scattered among many people, and with the charger it sits with the seller alone.

6. People don't know their reasons

Nisbett and Wilson (1977) academic paper showed that people often can't say accurately what caused their behavior, so they offer a plausible explanation instead of the real answer. Back to Yasser: "cheap, tasty, and a good portion" are attributes he can name, while the parking doesn't show up in his thinking. He isn't lying; he is sincere and wrong. I'm not saying people are always wrong; sometimes they do know their reason, especially when it is obvious. But the answer to "why did you buy?" is not necessarily the real reason.

In one lineNeed sets us moving, but what decides the seller is the full price, friction, trust and habit, not the strength of the desire.

4Who Is Buying?

Yasser bought for himself. But most big purchases are not made by one person.

The household

A new television for the home: the eldest son proposes, the father pays, the mother decides the size and the model, and the grandmother blocks: "the old one is fine." Four roles in four people, and a seller who talks to one of them is talking to part of the decision. This is my observation, not a study.

The company

Webster and Wind (1972) academic paper called the group of people who take part in a purchasing decision inside an organization the "buying center": the user, the influencer, the buyer, the decider and the gatekeeper. And the decider carries a personal risk: a procurement manager who picks a cheaper, unknown supplier takes the blame if it fails, while one who picks the known name and fails is excused, because people blame the market. So he leans toward the known name, and that is my observation. There is also the question "make or buy?", and Williamson (1975) academic book built on Coase here: when the cost of dealing with the market is high, the company makes in-house, and when it is low, it buys.

The state

The state buys three kinds of things. The first is public goods: Samuelson (1954) academic paper defined them as goods whose use by one person does not reduce their use by another, such as public lighting, and the market on its own does not produce enough of them. The second is things the state fears it won't be able to find in a crisis: according to the World Trade Organization, 80 countries and customs territories had introduced export prohibitions or restrictions linked to COVID-19 by 23 April 2020, mostly on medical supplies such as face masks. The third is purchasing as a policy tool.

There is a Saudi example of the third, on wheat, and I say plainly: I found no official Saudi source; the sources are trade press and summaries of US Department of Agriculture reports. The story reversed. Decree 335 cut the quotas of registered farmers by 12.5% a year, and I give no year for the decree because the sources disagree on it. The program ended in the 2015/2016 marketing year because of water. By 2018 support for growing wheat was back, and since the 2020/2021 season the General Food Security Authority has bought local wheat at a high price set by the government. In 2023/2024 that price was USD 467 a ton against an average of USD 394.74 for imported wheat, which is about 18% higher by my own calculation.

A second example: an analysis by the law firm Clyde & Co (January 2023) says that Saudi government entities will stop contracting with foreign companies that have no regional headquarters in the Kingdom from 1 January 2024, with exceptions. This also comes from a single secondary source, and I did not find the official text.

The idea that joins them: who bears the consequences?

The individual at home pays and lives with the result, so decides faster and sometimes impulsively. The manager in a company carries a personal risk to his job and reputation, not to the money, so he builds procedures, comparisons and committees. In the state, the one who decides rarely feels the result directly, so tenders, regulations and audits arrive. The further the consequence is from the one who decides, the more procedure there is and the less impulse. This is my own classification, not a research finding. And when does the idea stop holding? When the decision is tied to personal accountability even in a large organization, or when the procedures are imposed by regulation and not by distance. The owner of a small company usually buys like a household.

In one lineA purchase changes with who decides and who bears the result, and the further the consequence is from the decision, the more procedure and the less impulse.

Each voice gets three points: where it hits, where it is contested, and what question stays open.

In one lineThe opponents don't cancel need, but they remind us that it is shaped and priced, and that some of it can't be bought.

Practical CloseQuestions for Buyers and for Sellers

Everything above boils down to questions you can use yourself.

If you are a buyer, ask yourself before you pay

1. What is the need? Name it honestly, not the product's name. "I want to rest" is different from "I want this device."
2. Do I feel it now, or did something set me off? If there was an event, such as an offer, tiredness or an ad, ask: if that event hadn't happened, would I be buying?
3. Is this the only satisfier? Is there another way, cheaper, easier or free?
4. What is the full price of each way? Not only the price tag: time, effort, risk and the cost of getting out. And the cheaper on the price tag may be the dearest at its full price.
5. Am I on the default? A subscription that renews, an order that repeats, or a place I go to out of habit.

If you are a seller

The customer has the need, so where is the problem? Three possibilities: they don't feel it now, or they have another way of putting up with it, or they don't trust me. And don't ask "why did you buy?", because the answer is usually an explanation after the fact, not the real reason. Ask: what exactly happened, step by step? Where were you? What happened before? What was in front of you? If we had asked Yasser that, he might have mentioned the parking.

Why Is This Article on Mabr?

Mabr asks: why does most of our time go to paying for things? This article is part of the answer, not all of it. What it opens is a question: where is buying a choice, and where is it the only door? I don't have ready-made alternatives, and I don't claim there are any. What I can say is that the test of the "essential" deserves to be asked honestly before every purchase, and that whatever comes out of it as essential without ever having been a choice is exactly what deserves our research here.