Asking the Right Questions of the Right Audience in Jobs-to-be-Done Research

Practical Jobs-to-be-Done Series

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One of the first distinctions I personally noticed about Jobs-to-be-Done is that it avoids hypotheticals. Marketing researchers tend to use hypotheticals a lot and doing so gives them false confidence when trying to predict the behavior of customers (or in this case hypothetical potential customers). The questions could be related to product preferences, features trade-offs, preferred channel, etc. At the end of the day it doesn’t really matter.

I’m going to set product innovation research aside for the time being and focus on something as simple as channel preference for an electronic product (product type distinctions are important). I’m going set up two simple survey scenarios that are related to the purchase journey. Let’s take a look at how the results can be different.

First, let’s take a look at a common marketing series:

Audience: 1500 general consumers - ~20% said are thinking about buying an electronic widget in the next 12 months; but no quotas

Q1: If you were to purchase an electronic widget, where would you prefer to purchase it?

• A1: Online

• A2: Retail Store

• A3: Other

Oops, that wasn’t much of a series.

Let’s say for the sake of argument that 55% said they would prefer to purchase in a retail store. Obviously, that means that 45% would prefer to make the purchase online or via some other means. Right? Okay, we have all we need. 🚀 and ⚖ immediately!

Let’s now take a look at another approach and see what we learn

Audience: 1500 general consumers who made an electronic widget purchase within the past 6 months

Q1a: How important is it that you are able to make a purchase online?

1. Not important at all

2. Somewhat important

3. Important

4. Very important

5. Extremely important

Q1b: How satisfied are you with your ability to make a purchase online?

1. Not satisfied at all

2. Somewhat satisfied

3. Satisfied

4. Very satisfied

5. Extremely satisfied

Q2a: How important is it that you are able to make a purchase in a retail store?

1. Not important at all

2. Somewhat important

3. Important

4. Very important

5. Extremely important

Q2b: How satisfied are you with your ability to make a purchase in a retail store?

1. Not satisfied at all

2. Somewhat satisfied

3. Satisfied

4. Very satisfied

5. Extremely satisfied

Q3a: How important is it that you are able to change from one purchase location to another, e.g., from website to store, store to website, website, to phone, etc.?

1. Not important at all

2. Somewhat important

3. Important

4. Very important

5. Extremely important

Q3b: How satisfied are you with your ability to change from one purchase location to another, e.g., from website to store, store to website, website, to phone, etc.?

1. Not important at all

2. Somewhat important

3. Important

4. Very important

5. Extremely important

Q4a: How important is it that you are able to complete the entire purchase without having to change purchase locations, e.g., completely on website, in a store, etc.?

1. Not important at all

2. Somewhat important

3. Important

4. Very important

5. Extremely important

Q4b: How satisfied are you with your ability to complete the entire purchase without having to change purchase locations, e.g., completely on website, in a store, etc.?

1. Not important at all

2. Somewhat important

3. Important

4. Very important

5. Extremely important

What I've found is that having access to both in-store and digital is considered to be very important. So, if you are part of a digital transformation team, you will tell everyone your customers want digital shopping. If you are part of the retail in-store team, you will tell everyone your customers want in-store shopping. That is misleading because we also know that people may be more satisfied with retail stores - in this hypothetical electronic widget category. Maybe overly satisfied.

This seems to be true whether your population consists of people who say they are thinking about purchasing, or people who have recently made a purchase. The difference is that when you ask them to make trade-offs, it forces a winner.

However, if you limit your sample to people who have recently made a purchase, and ALSO ask...

Q5: Where did you initiate your purchase?

• Retail store

• Online

…what you might find is that while access to retail stores is important to a significant portion of the sample (about the same as digital), what if only 25% choose retail stores to initiate their purchase journey and the rest chose a digital (or other) channel. I won’t get into the satisfaction data because it makes the story even uglier.

This shouldn’t be surprising because we are all living in an increasingly digital world. But why would they rate retail store importance so highly? That may require some more questions; but as we transition to digital as a society, there are possibly generational groups that still want the security of knowing they can get help from a real person if they need. A current need for an insurance policy which may not last much longer. There are some other factors as well, which you can draw from other profiling questions.

The second scenario provides a wealth of information that can be sliced and diced numerous ways. The first scenario provides us with false confidence using a hypothetical trade-off to a group that may never purchase the product. If you ask the wrong audience the wrong question you’ll get misleading and incomplete inputs into your mission-critical decisions.

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