"Need" vs "Want" in psychology In marketing the terms needs and wants are usually used to refer to different concepts. It is not clear to me what exactly they mean.

In psychology what are the definitions for needs and wants? What is the difference between them?
Research in neuroscience allowed to distinguish two concepts: "liking" and "wanting". Berridge and colleagues distinguished two different brain mechanisms for that.


By injecting a tiny droplet of amphetamine drug in the nucleus accumbens (dopamine system), they noted an increase of the incentive salience that cues trigger for their reward without altering other components of desire or reward.
Experimentally, they also found that the generation of pleasure “liking” is more restricted neurochemically: opioid stimulation but not dopamine stimulation in some limbic strutures can enhance “liking”, whereas “wanting” is enhanced by both.


Research suggest that liking and wanting belongs to two different pathways mediated by opioid and dopamine circuits.
This distinction between liking and wanting could lead to ambivalent processes individuals could like what they do not want and want what they do not like.

To conlude, according to Berridge there are different "hedonic hotspots" in the brain that, according to the types of valences of the external stimuli, may modulate different processes such as: wanting, liking and 'needing'



References :

Wanting and Liking: Observations from the Neuroscience and Psychology Laboratory