The Job To Be Done – Marketing To The Consumer Need

Let me share an example today on how research plays a crucial role in understanding the consumer, a pre-requisite to marketing and advertising,

Before the consumer journey, what is important is designing products that do the Job. With few exceptions, almost every job people need or want to do has a social, functional and emotional dimension. If marketers understand each of these dimensions, then they can design a product that's specifically targeted to do the job. To say, the job (not the customer) must be the fundamental unit of analysis for a marketer who hopes to develop products that customers will buy. The below example will help with the depth of this,

To see why, consider a fast-food restaurant's effort to improve sales of its milkshakes. Its marketers first defined the market segment by product -milkshakes & then segmented it further by profiling the demographic and personality, demographics of those customers who frequently bought milkshakes. Next, they invited people who fit the profile to evaluate if making the shakes thicker, more chocolaty, cheaper or chunkier would satisfy them better. The panelists gave clear feedback but the consequent improvement in the product had no impact on sales.

A new researcher then spent a long day in a restaurant seeking to understand the jobs the customers were trying to get done when they hired a milkshake. He chronicled that when each milk shake was bought, what other products the customers purchased, whether these consumers were alone or with a group, whether they consumed the shale on the premises or drove off with it and so on. He was surprised to find that 40 per cent of all milk shakes were purchased in the early morning. Most often, these early morning customers were alone, they did not buy anything else and they consumed their shakes in their cars or in the train. The researcher then returned to interview the morning customers in an effort to understand what caused them to purchase a milkshake. Most of the customers mentioned the same thing (the insight), that they faced a long, boring commute and needed something to make the drive interesting. Also, they weren’t yet hungry and knew that they would be by 10 am, so they wanted to consume something now that would keep their hunger at bay until noon. Also, because of constraints – morning rush hour and wearing work clothes, they had (at most) one free hand.

The researcher inquired further: “Tell me about a time when you were in the same situation buy you did not buy a milkshake and what did you buy instead?”. Sometimes he learnt that they bought a bagel, however, the bagels were too dry. Bagels with cream cheese or jam resulted in sticky fingers. Sometimes these commuters bought a banana but that didn’t last long enough to solve the boring commute problem. Same with doughnuts as it did not carry people past the 10 am hunger strike. The milk shake in turn did the job better. It took people about 20 minutes to suck the viscous milk shake through the thin straw, addressing the boring commute problem. They could consume it cleanly with one hand. Also, by 10 am they felt less hungry than when they tried the alternatives. It didn’t matter much that it wasn’t a healthy food because becoming healthy wasn’t essential to the job they were hiring the milkshake to do. 

Once the marketers understood the jobs the customers were trying to do, it became lucid which improvements to the milkshake would get those jobs done even better and which were irrelevant, how could they tackle the boring commute job? Maybe make the milkshake even thicker to last longer, and include tiny chunks of fruit to add a dimension of unpredictability & anticipation to the monotonous morning routine. Just as important, the restaurant chain could deliver the product more effectively by moving the dispensing machine in front of the counter and selling customers a pre-paid swipe card so they could dash in, gas up and go without getting stuck in the drive-through lane.

Then comes in marketing and advertising where a seamless transition between channels not only enhances convenience but also strengthens brand loyalty and customer satisfaction. So, if you think it's only a concern for your online journey, think again. At this pivotal stage of the customer journey, where the customer has just converted, businesses need to give customers a reason to keep coming back. Building a holistic offline-to-online cross-channel experience provides another channel for brands to significantly improve engagement and increase retention.

Take the example of a retailer that implements an offline-to-online tactic as a lever for its overall cross-channel strategy. A simple in-store purchase can trigger a crafted post-purchase nurture sequence that has a digital receipt which links to a loyalty program. By merging the offline and online experiences, it can help enhance customer satisfaction and drive more sales.