FINDING THE RIGHT JOB

FOR YOUR PRODUCT

MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW
 INTRODUCTION

 Most companies segment by characteristics of their products

(category/ price) or customers (age/ gender/ marital status/
income).
 Problem - Customers buying behavior changes way more often than
demographics or psychographics. Also, demographic data cannot
explain why a man takes a date out to a restaurant on one night while
sits in and orders pizza on another night.
 Product/ customer characteristics are poor indicators of
customer’s behavior
 While making purchases customers do not confine themselves to
product categories. Instead they choose between an array of
options that would get a job done
 These jobs are what marketers need to understand to segment
their markets effectively
 JOB DEFINED MARKETS VS.
PRODUCT CATEGORY DEFINED
MARKETS
Find out what job the customer needs to hire the
product for!
 Milkshake example
 Co. resolved to improve milkshake sales
 Conducted research by defining their market by product – milkshakes. Invited likely
consumers to evaluate the product and made changes accordingly
 Approach changed. Researcher observed milk shake sales. It was found that 40 %
milkshake sales occurred in morning.
 After interviewing them it was found out that they got milkshakes for the long boring
commute and to stave off hunger until noon. Bagels were dry, cream cheese/ jam
resulted in sticky fingers, donuts didn’t help with hunger, bananas didn’t last long for
the long commute. Milkshakes did the job better than any of the competitors
 Once this was found out, attributes could have been added to help the milkshake
perform the job even better – like making it thicker so that it would last longer, swirling
in chunks to make it more interesting
PRODUCT/ CUSTOMER BASED
SEGMENTATION
JOB BASED SEGMENTATION
 CARS OR OFFICES ON WHEELS?

Segmented as compacts, mid-size, full

size, SUVs, trucks, sports and luxury cars
• Customers resist premium prices for features that
are irrelevant for the job they require to be done

Millions hire a car primarily to be a mobile

office
• Would pay for electrical outlets, wireless access,
hands free phone, big screen blackberry, docking
station, fold out desks and organizing systems
JOB OF DIFFERENTIATION

 Positioning paradigm - Usually companies make

positioning maps to find out gaps in the markets but
then these features can easily be copied by competition
and another gap has to be found out – cycle continues
 Segmenting and differentiating markets by jobs can be
sustained for much longer
 IKEA example
OTHER JOB CANDIDATES/
COMPETITORS
 Most marketers view their competitors as those who make
the same category of products but that is generally a small
subset of job candidates

 Metro not only competes against metropolitan dailies but

also against conversation with strangers, paperback novels,
iPods, mobile phones, blackberries and boredom
 Automakers (car as an office) are not just competing against
other automakers but also against star bucks etc.
DOING THE JOB OF FINDING
THE JOB
 Requires watching, participating, writing and thinking.
 Entails:

Where to What to
look look for
How to
How to interpret
look for it findings
 WHERE TO LOOK?

sometimes the customers are using the

●
Current products for purposes other than the
customer base company had intended

Customers buying
competitor ●
Can shift to your own
products

Non- trying to get the job done but are

●

constrained by complexity and cost of

consumers existing solutions
HOW TO LOOK?

Surveys and Observati

interviews on
Participation
and
Coevoluti
experimentation on
SYNTHESIZING INSIGHTS

 Customer interactions need to be distilled into a situation

case
 Situation case – description of events trail of events,
experiences and thought processes that led to the purchase
decision
 This can explain the entire situation - like what other
candidates were considered and what factors were
considered when making the hiring decision
 CONFIGURING THE MARKETING
MIX AND BUSINESS PLAN
It is only when a job is well-understood can a business model
required to do it perfectly become clear

Promotion
●
During early years of a product, word of mouth is more cost-effective than media advertising. Positive
word of mouth can only be achieved after the product has performed the job right
●
A good purpose brand clarifies which features and functions are relevant to the job and which are not

Segmenting based on product means providing and

Product
●

improving features that are irrelevant to the job

Marketers should understand all the job candidates

Price
●

they are competing against to get the right price

When a set of experiences required to do the job are defined, then placement

Place
●

becomes more apparent. In the milkshake example, a dispenser was placed for
customers who were in a hurry for their long commute
SIZING UP THE SITUATION

 ‘Customers don’t want a quarter inch drill, they want

a quarter inch hole’

 Reason why marketers segment by product and

customer category rather than by jobs is because the
data for the former is easily available

 Understanding the job to be done is the most

important way to limit both risk and expense