Consumer Research and Jobs to be Done for New Product Development

How to Leverage Jobs to be Done for Product Development

Despite businesses having more data than ever on their customers, innovation still feels like rocket science and companies continue to fail.   Jobs to be Done is a great way for businesses to win at product development by focussing on the real needs of the consumer using consumer research to underpin the strategy.

Overwhelmed by data or not collecting the right data?

Have a look at the way you collect your data today. It is possible that we are focusing on the wrong data and asking the wrong questions.  Is it possible that the patterns of behaviour and associations you are observing are not really viable for prediction?  The first step in innovation should be to review how you are collecting data now, and thinking about better questions to ask.

Business needs before consumer needs

Many business are forced or are trapped into innovating dependent on the needs of the business and this can lead to failure because it doesnt have the consumer at its heart. What businesses really need to focus on is the what people are trying to achieve in their everyday lives. This is what has come to be called the job to be done theory (JBTD) and it is underpinned by solid market research.  We believe that leveraging JTBD and market research with the right questions and processes, can help even small businesses overcome the hoodoo of innovation and start launching winning products and services. 

Building a winning NPD Pipeline

Many companies innovate by heading into a room with a bunch of people in marketing and start brainstorming ideas randomly in the hope they will come up with a winning revenue drive.  Those ideas go through a gate process which can slow down strong ideas and change ideas from their original premise. But more importantly the iterative, ‘Ideas first’ approach means we often end up testing and refining the wrong ideas which are more likely just lead us to another failed launch.

Fail fast or find the winning product?

According to JBTD theory, you don’t have to fail fast or go through stage after stage of research and sign offs. The goal of JBTD is people focused and based on finding out what people are trying to achieve first in order to create the winning product concept.

JTBD theory defines markets as a group of people that need to get a job done. We need to figure out  what is the functional job and steps to getting the job done and where our business can have an impact? Where we can find a job that needs solving by either an existing, repurposed or new product and launch a success, a product or service that people need.

How it works:

It is a simple process with a few steps:

1. Define your market
2. Commission qualitative research – in depth interviews, ethnographic in situ observations or mini focus groups – to uncover the core functional needs and emotional payoffs desired
3. Use a map to break the jobs down into discrete steps that people are trying to get done as they try to complete the job.
4. List all the needs and outcomes they are wanting at each step. Understand how people evaluate success at each step
5. Quantify the size of the need. Is it underserved or overserved and where is the whitespace?
6. Now map the needs and discover the segments of opportunity in a given market and align current or existing products and services (which may simply need repositioning or repurposing) or…
7. Conceptualise new products to meet unmet needs

Market research which is customer centric is perfect for helping clients to create winning products for market success.

Benefits and Takeaways

Market research companies like Ruby Cha Cha are well positioned to help you with your JBTD strategy. We can:

•  Helping clients define the market they are in and understand the job that people are hiring products for
• Create a job map with steps and needs
•  Reveal any UNKNOWN needs – things people haven’t thought of before
• Quantify met and unmet needs – and chart the whitespace
• Help you facilitate a product development strategy session 

Want to know more?  Get in touch

 

References:

What Customers Want: Using Outcome-Driven Innovation to Create Breakthrough Products and Services: Using Outcome-Driven Innovation to Create Breakthrough Products and Services; Anthony Ulwick (2005) McGraw Hill Profession