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The Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) framework is built on the premise that people do not buy products; they "hire" them to make progress in their lives or resolve a struggling moment.

Consumer Needs

JTBD is a great way to understand your customer. Helps you know what to pitch, and how.

Phase 1: Define the Market & The Customer Landscape

Before ideation or strategy formulation can begin, you need to establish a definitive, customer-centric view of the market.

Identify Key Stakeholders: Moving beyond just the buyer, also clearly understand the End User (functional job executor), the Purchase Decision-Maker (evaluates financial outcomes), and the Product Lifecycle Support Team (installs, maintains, and disposes).
Define the Core Functional Job: Frame the market around the task the customer is trying to accomplish, devoid of solutions (e.g., "prepare a hot beverage," not "boil water"). A well-defined job statement consists of a verb, an object, and a contextual clarifier.
Map the Job Drivers: Understand the "Why" behind customer variance. Identify the Attitudes (personality/social traits), Background (long-term context), and Circumstances (immediate near-term factors) that cause different customers to prioritize jobs differently.
Deconstruct the Job Map: Break the core job down into the universal eight process steps (define, locate, prepare, confirm, execute, monitor, modify, and conclude) to identify where inefficiencies exist regardless of the current product used. You can read more about these 8 steps in the Job Map page.

Job Map

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Phase 2: Customer Discovery & "Demand-Side" Interrogation

Do not accept surface-level answers or rely on focus groups to ask customers what they want. Use criminal/intelligence-style interrogation techniques (but politely of course) to uncover the causality of their purchases.

Master the Customer's Language: Customers speak in terms of struggles, not technical specs. Therefore you need to unpack vague words (e.g., asking "What does easy mean to you?") to establish specific reference points. Translate their narratives into strict Desired Outcome Statements: Direction of improvement + Performance metric + Object of control + Contextual clarifier.
Uncover the Four Forces of Progress: Every purchase is a battle against inertia. Map the forces at play:
- Push: The frustrations with the current situation.
- Pull (Magnetism): The appeal of the new solution's outcomes.
- Anxiety: Fears and uncertainties about adopting the new solution.
- Habit: Allegiance to the status quo and current behaviors.
Note: Innovation adoption only occurs when (Push + Pull) > (Anxiety + Habit).
Identify Pain Points & Current Approaches: Observe the workarounds and compensating behaviors customers use to cope with current limitations (e.g., taping a button on an alarm clock) to find immediate innovation opportunities.

Phase 3: Quantitative Prioritization & Outcome-Based Segmentation (or Need Based Segmentation)

Demographic segmentation (e.g., targeting "suburban soccer moms") creates phantom targets. You must segment the market quantitatively based on unmet needs.