Finding the Right Job For Your Product

Clayton M. Christensen, Scott D. Anthony, Gerald Berstell, Denise Nitterhouse

 The fallacy that most companies fall into is to aim for market segmentation through:
o Characteristics of their product (affordability, features)
o Demographics of the customers (age, gender, income)
The issue is that these are static parameters and does not take into consideration neither the
changing customer behaviours nor their changing requirements.
 Once the market is segmented based on product or customer characteristics, companies try to
position themselves by identifying an unexplored area in a 2X2 matrix based on quality or
uniqueness (spectrum of products).
However, companies will not be able to maintain this kind of differentiation because competitors
easily mimic the same products with additional features. Hence, the companies won’t be able to
charge the premium they were initially charging and will be drawn to a price war or will require
further investments in R&D for innovation. However, the latter will also get mimicked and the
vicious cycle continues.
 To overcome this fallacy, differentiation should be along the lines which is not easy to mimic. For
this, it is important to understand the job that the customer aims to fulfil by buying the product or
service and then segment the market to fulfil such jobs.
 Once the company identifies the job customer wants to be fulfilled, the spectrum of competition
widens since it is not just the direct competitor of the product that is out there to fulfil that
requirement. Here, the company has shifted from a seller’s perspective (product features) to a
customer’s perspective (why he uses the product, when he uses it, where he uses it and how he
uses it). This will enable the company to enhance the key attributes of customer experience rather
than forcing the customer to compromise with a product that the company just wants to sell. This
helps the company compete against the real competition, which is much larger than a product
category-defined market.
 To grow a company, first place to look for customers is in the current customer base of the
company. It is followed by looking for customers who are buying the competing products instead
and then finally by looking at non-consumers who are unable to find the right solutions for the job
that they have. The latter will help in disruptive innovations for the company.
 If the job is known, interviews and surveys need to be done to understand the situation in which
the customer buys rather than the characteristics of the costumer. This will enable the company
to understand the functional and emotional dimensions in which a customer buys and hence is not
restricted even if that customer’s need changes.
 If the job is vague and complete solution is not available, instead of qualitative methods, customer
should be shadowed to understand what they really want. Sometime, empathic discovery needs
to be done, where the company should “live with the problem” to understand the product that is
needed to solve it. If it is a completely new application and customer is not sure of what they want,
then company needs to make the product flexible, so that it can be fine-tuned multiple times
through coevolution.
 The key aspect in innovation is to identify the “help wanted” signs from the consumers and solve
it by consolidating similar requirements from multiple consumers.
 For every product that is developed, there must be a purpose it should solve (purpose brand). It
will tell the customers which job is being addressed and it will tell the company what features are
relevant to the job that need to be made.
 The most important learning is that every company should understand the mindset of the
customer and devise solutions to enhance their experience, while developing products.