Clay Christensen’s Milkshake Marketing - HBS Working Knowledge. When planning new products, companies often start by segmenting their markets and positioning their merchandise accordingly. This segmentation involves either dividing the market into product categories, such as function or price, or dividing the customer base into target demographics, such as age, gender, education, or income level. Unfortunately, neither way works very well, according to Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen, who notes that each year 3.
The jobs- to- be- done point of view causes you to crawl into the skin of your customer and go with her as she goes about her day, always asking the question as she does something: Why did she do it that way?”The problem is that consumers usually don't go about their shopping by conforming to particular segments. Rather, they take life as it comes. And when faced with a job that needs doing, they essentially . To that end, Christensen suggests that companies start segmenting their markets according to . We developed this idea because we wanted to understand what causes us to buy a product, not what's correlated with it. We realized that the causal mechanism behind a purchase is, 'Oh, I've got a job to be done.' And it turns out that it's really effective in allowing a company to build products that people want to buy. The company started by segmenting its market both by product (milkshakes) and by demographics (a marketer's profile of a typical milkshake drinker). Next, the marketing department asked people who fit the demographic to list the characteristics of an ideal milkshake (thick, thin, chunky, smooth, fruity, chocolaty, etc.). The would- be customers answered as honestly as they could, and the company responded to the feedback. But alas, milkshake sales did not improve. The company then enlisted the help of one of Christensen's fellow researchers, who approached the situation by trying to deduce the . First, he spent a full day in one of the chain's restaurants, carefully documenting who was buying milkshakes, when they bought them, and whether they drank them on the premises. He discovered that 4. The next morning, he returned to the restaurant and interviewed customers who left with milkshake in hand, asking them what job they had hired the milkshake to do. Christensen details the findings in a recent teaching note, . They weren't yet hungry, but knew that they'd be hungry by 1. And they faced constraints: They were in a hurry, they were wearing work clothes, and they had (at most) one free hand. Understanding the job to be done, the company could then respond by creating a morning milkshake that was even thicker (to last through a long commute) and more interesting (with chunks of fruit) than its predecessor. The chain could also respond to a separate job that customers needed milkshakes to do: serve as a special treat for young children—without making the parents wait a half hour as the children tried to work the milkshake through a straw. In that case, a different, thinner milkshake was in order. Proven Success And Purpose Branding. Several major companies that have succeeded with a jobs- to- be- done mechanism: Fed. Ex, for example, fulfills the job of getting a package from here to there as fast as possible. Disney does the job of providing warm, safe, fantasy vacations for families. On. Star provides peace of mind. Procter & Gamble's product success rate rose dramatically when the company started segmenting its markets according to a product's job, Christensen says. Quite simply, purpose branding involves naming the product after the purpose it serves. Kodak, for example, has seen great success with its Fun. Saver brand of single- use cameras, which performs the job of preserving fun memories. Milwaukee Electric Tool Corp. Its Hole- Hawg drills, which make big holes between studs and joists, are also quite popular. For one thing, future product planning usually involves analyzing existing data, and most existing data is organized by customer demographics or product category. To go out and get data about a job is really hard. But there are a lot of people who hire consultants to tell them how big the market is. And because the data is organized in the wrong way, you start to believe that's how the market should be organized. Christensen gives the example of a company that developed a novel tool designed to help carpenters with the daunting task of installing a door in a doorframe, a job that usually took several tools to do. But a major home goods store refused to sell the tool because its shelves were organized by product category—and there was no shelf in the store dedicated to the singular job of hanging a door. So you have to think inside of a category as opposed to getting out. You've just got to make the decision to divorce yourself from the constraints that are arbitrarily created by the design of the old org chart. Find here the list of all documents published on this website. This section contains the major reports, studies, publications and information regarding the. The Most Important Things in Life Aren't Things. Life with Heidi includes travel, entertainment, easy recipes with some giveaways.
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