Last week, I made the claim that, as an industry, if PHCs had been focused the last 50 years on working tirelessly to improve the attractiveness of the “choose life” product vis-a-vis the abortion services product, we would have Planned Parenthood running scared, and would be winning the market share battle.
No doubt, that claim will anger many leaders of Pregnancy Help Centers.
My response that anger would simply be this number: 345,672
That’s the number of abortions Planned Parenthood did last year: 947 every single day.
Of course, the “choose life” product is winning some clients, but the “abortion services” product is dominating the market share battle.
Who Has the Better Product?
Evaluating the two competitive offerings only from the perspective of product attractiveness to a woman experiencing an unexpected pregnancy, which product is more appealing, choose life services or abortion services?
A useful framework to help us answer that question is Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. If you haven’t heard of this you can Google it and familiarize yourself with it.
Here’s a graphical representation of the hierarchy.
This is a bit of an oversimplification of the hierarchy, but it basically says that a person’s emotional fulfillment (happiness) increases as she moves up the hierarchy from her most basic needs being met at the bottom of the hierarchy – Physiological needs – up through the ultimate fulfillment in the hierarchy which is Self-actualization.
Importantly, the hierarchy posits that you can’t achieve fulfillment at a higher level on the hierarchy until your needs have been met at the levels below that.
I would submit to you that Planned Parenthood’s abortion services offering is so attractive to women facing unexpected pregnancies because those pregnancies are positioned by Planned Parenthood as a threat to ALL of the five levels on the hierarchy.
Then Planned Parenthood positions abortion services as the way to achieve, or at the least get back on the path of pursuing, the top tier on the hierarchy: Self-actualization.
That is a product offering that is very compelling, and tough to compete against.
How do PHCs, in general, currently respond to position choose life services as a better option than abortion services?
Even PHCs that do a reasonable job of marketing, and that is the minority, will focus primarily on the bottom two tiers: Physiological and Safety needs.
In other words, they will say to a woman something to the effect of “We can provide these things to you if that is what you need to change your mind about getting an abortion.”
Just from Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs perspective, I think you can see why the abortion services offering is comparatively more attractive to women than the choose life services offering.
The latter focuses on basic needs, whereas the former promises the top tier of self-actualization, a much higher form of happiness and fulfillment.
Whether or not that is what abortion services actually deliver is a topic for another time, but that is how Planned Parenthood positions their offering in a woman’s mind.
There Is Some Good News
Here’s what I believe is very, very good news.
Even with this substantial, perhaps I should say overwhelming, competitive disadvantage at the level of the product offering, PHCs still win some clients away from Planned Parenthood.
I have read hundreds of stories revealing how these women changed their minds about getting an abortion, and I think the answer as to why they did so is simple: they know that the life growing in their wombs is a human being.
Simply, they do not want to end the life of that human being, their own child.
However, with the power of the compelling perceived benefits of abortion services, with the promise of achieving self-actualization ever present in their minds, women need more than a promise of meeting their Physiological and Safety needs to overcome the attractiveness of the abortion services offering.
In my mind, the product improvement path for PHCs to pursue is clear.
A PHC will win more competitive battles against Planned Parenthood to the extent that the PHC can offer, and then deliver on, the promise that choosing life for her child will not only meet a woman’s Physiological and Safety needs, but also her needs for Love and belonging, Esteem, and Self-actualization.
Tomorrow, I will demonstrate with one easy example how you can know that the vast majority of PHCs are completely missing the mark when it comes to creating a powerfully competitive product.
Regards,
Brett
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