Ch. 6 Consumer Decision Making

When a consumer makes a purchase, that purchase is motivated by one or several wants or needs. There is a chart of needs based on a theory by Maslow:

One of Maslow's theories of motivation is the peak experience. A peak experience is experiencing love, music, art or the beauty of nature. Examples of theses are when consumers purchase tickets to a museum, opera, or a trip to an African safari. These can range in a rare ocassion for the working class or frequent occasions for upper class consumers.
Peak experiences may be a reward you give to yourself when you've accomplished something difficult like a cruise when you graduate from college or tickets to a play-off game after a promotion.
The Hard Rock Cafe is in the peak experience business. Their goal is to create "authentic experiences that rock" for every guest. As a moderately priced music venue, music memoribilia museum, retail store and restaurant the Hard Rock is able to provide an affordible peak experiences to all social classes. There is no admission fee for patrons to enter a HRC. By providing free live music and a rock 'n' roll museum, patrons are more likely to purchase souvenirs from HRC retail store to remember their peak experience with such as a Hard Rock tee-shirt or  guitar pin.