In last week’s article we had seen how keeping my flat clean during lock down was a job to be done for me and how I could utilize various options that are available to me to satisfy this particular job to be done… My final selection depended on the time that I have in hand or the service that best suited and satisfied my particular job to be done of keeping my flat clean…
We had also seen how a particular job to be done remains more or less constant for consumers irrespective of the technology changes that keep happening around the product using the example of cameras.. We also saw how a particular product could be modified to satisfy two different jobs to be done taking the example of the “masala dosa” …
If it is so clear how the jobs to done of each segment is crucial why do we find it so difficult to implement the same?
Let’s understand the usual bottlenecks that we run into which prevents us from implementing the same more effectively..
If we consider a few examples of well-known branded products which have been hugely successful which were built on the jobs to be done…
One of the products that revolutionized personalized music was the Walkman which was introduced by Sony…They released the Walkman as a portable music player using which anyone could listen to their favorite music. When launched the Sony Walkman played music from cassettes and became hugely popular.
The job to done that was being addressed was listening to personalized music …
The same Job to Done was again used to create the hugely successful Apple iPod… The iPod addressed the same Jobs to be Done as the Sony Walkman but stored the music of your choice digitally.
So if the chances of success by creating products based on the targeted consumers Jobs to be done then why is it that Managers find it so difficult to correctly address this?
Every Manager or executive always looks forward to dominating the market with differentiated products based on the jobs to be done requirements of the customers and every executive will vouch that their biggest aim is to understand what consumers actually do with their products to further build and develop on them…
But in reality we find executives following the opposite by basing product improvement strategies on attribute based segmentation methods that very often leads to undifferentiated one size fits all products…Lets understand what could be the major reasons for the same..
1.Size of the opportunity
We have over years learned to just make our assessments of the size of the opportunity… Am sure everyone of you have heard questions like what’s the size of the market or what’s the ROI of the investment etc. whenever you have brought up a new proposal.
While always keeping the size of the opportunity is crucial in making business decisions it is also equally crucial to understand the opportunity in more depth and in detail. This really explains why usually established market leaders miss out on futuristic products and segments though they would actually have been the pioneers of the same from a technological point of view. As all effort is made to understand the market size and very little effort to really understand the jobs to be done, the resource allocation also happens only on the basis of the data that is presently available or rather to confirm to the data that is presently available..
2. Considering consumer needs as Hierarchical Data Management Systems
In the initial stages of migration to IT systems most of the reports generated by most companies were centered around the following
· Products
· Consumers
· Organization Units
These data show a manager how much of a particular product is being sold, how profitable is each product … Which consumer is buying which product, what costs are associated with servicing each consumer, revenue by business units and products etc.
These data points are crucial in running a business ..The issue starts when we start believing that consumers world also work in the same way as the above data points and starts making business decisions based on a few data points without considering all the Jobs to be done in a particular product category
Let me explain this with a real life example from one of the companies that I worked for the consumer durables space whom we will call as Company B. This company was present across all the segments of the durables space but was the clear market leader in colour television with innovative and durable products. In its quest for quality the company had backward integrated and was making most of the products that went into the colour televisions. The second half of the nineties saw the entry of a low-cost player with a very innovative business model which allowed them to price their products almost 30 % lower than the prevailing market prices.
The new company had just licensed a brand name and manufactured the products with their own OEMs and hence didn’t have any overhead costs and we will call this company as Company A.
Company A grew volumes quickly as it was disrupting the lower end of the market ..Customers in this segment as per my earlier article looked forward to a basic product which met their job to be done, in this case entertainment.
The reports and data that company B got that the lower end of the market was growing and in keeping with the best practices of innovation started a new brand which we shall call as Brand E which operated under a totally different team ..While Brand E was able to offer the product at a price which was lower by around 20% to the consumers it still couldn’t match the dealer and distributor margins that Company A nor the huge marketing budgets that Company A was utilising to build awareness about its offering as Brand E was still utilising all the production facilities of Company B and by just changing the distribution set up couldn’t really match up to what Company A was doing..
So while Company A was offering a complete package which was addressing the jobs to be done of the lower-end consumers by offering them a product at a very attractive prize, they were also taking care of the jobs to be done of the distributors and the retailers by doing huge advertisements about the product and the prize which made consumer enquiries to go up and thereby improving no of rotations of the product across the distribution chain it was also offering them good margins..
So as expected Brand E never really got off the ground and folded up soon.
3.Aiming Product Innovations only based on Market Segmentation
I am sure if each one of us go through the features provided in your mobile phones and cars you will find so many features that you haven’t even used once. This also happens because instead of considering the jobs to done for each segment of consumers the executives aim their improvements based on the existing defined market segments and executives frame the consumers requirements based on the same.
By framing product innovations only based on market segments these executives are making one size fits all products for all the different sets of consumers that fall into these segments ..This prevents development of products which meet the jobs to be done of several consumers..
4. Confirming to requirements of existing Distribution Channels
The existing distribution models have also built their business models around a particular way of displaying products and ways to make money from products. We have all heard about how the existing retail chains disagreed to sell Sony transistors and portable televisions…The retail counters which were till then used to selling televisions made from vacuum tubes made a good amount of money by repairing the vacuum tube televisions which were prone to malfunction regularly… Since this was not likely to happen with the transistor-based Sony portable television the retailers didn’t find it beneficial to promote the product… Sony had to then create a new retail chain using discount stores to sell their products…
5.Conforming to one way of marketing communication methods to consumer
Presently our consumer communication strategies are based on devising a effective cost effective plan based on the dimensions of age, sex, lifestyle and product category ..But as can be seen from my “masala dosa” example in my previous article, the jobs to be done of the same person could differ under different situations.
So the jobs to be done of the executive who is in a morning rush to have a breakfast is very different for the same person when we goes out for a leisurely dinner with family during the weekends…So while he would consume the same “masala dosa” under both these situations the communication methods to be used for addressing each of these job requirements would be very different.
Marketing communication that wins is when it is targeted without considering the different jobs to be done under different situations…
While the list can go on and on the primary reason why executives find it difficult to implement Jobs to be done is that to implement the same on a product or service you will need to clearly specify what jobs to be done gets addressed perfectly by the product…In doing so it also specifies what jobs to be done cannot be addressed by the product or service..
Consider the example of the different hotel chains of the Tatas. The Taj chain is targeted at the ultrarich traveler and the services are provided based on his jobs to be done. The Gateway hotel is targeted at the business traveler and the services offered are very different as the jobs to be done are very different for a business traveler. Similarly, the Ginger Hotel from the Tatas are aimed at the budget traveler and the services provided are very different as his jobs to be done are very different from the earlier two. While all the three hotels might have come up in the same City of Mumbai its because that city has the requirement for each of the three different jobs to be done..
Only when companies understand the need of addressing jobs to be done will they start realizing the opportunities that exist in each of the jobs to be done and achieve sustainable success…
