After twenty years working in innovation, many of which has seen us partner with some big CPG brands, I’ve seen too many products fail despite extensive consumer research. And I mean extensive.
Companies spending millions of dollars on research, and the products still fail. How does that happen? And why?
Many of these failures weren’t due to lack of data. The teams we partnered with had mountains of it. The problem wasn’t that they didn’t have enough data. The challenge was making sense of it all.
Think about your last failed product launch. I bet you were expecting it to yield great results or maybe, deep down, you knew it wouldn’t work because you couldn’t quite work out how to use the data you’d collected. The data was there, but it wasn’t telling you what you needed to know.
It’s not just you. The majority of CPG brands that come to us realize there are gaps in their traditional consumer research… but they can’t quite understand what it is they’re meant to be looking out for. They can feel something’s missing, but they can’t put their finger on it.
Does this resonate? If so, your traditional consumer research is likely missing the mark.
That fancy segmentation study? The exhaustive focus groups? The detailed purchase behavior analytics? They can be useful…but don’t tell the full story.
That’s because people don’t buy products; they hire them to get Jobs done. They hire them to make progress in their lives. That’s the key: progress, not products.
The limitations of your traditional research
If you’re reading this, you’re probably frustrated. You’ve watched innovations with promising test scores flop in market. You’ve seen expensive research yield superficial insights that don’t translate to actual purchase behavior.
Traditional CPG research focuses obsessively on demographics, psychographics, and stated preferences.
We segment consumers into neat buckets and track what they say they want. We create these beautiful personas with names like “Sustainability Sarah” and “Convenience Carl.” But this approach fundamentally misunderstands human behavior.
The same person who buys organic, sustainably-packaged granola for breakfast might grab a convenience store candy bar on their afternoon commute. Traditional segmentation would label these as contradictory behaviors, but they’re not. They’re not contradictory at all. They represent different Jobs to be done in different contexts.
The granola wasn’t hired because the consumer is a “health-conscious millennial.” It was hired to “start my day with energy while feeling good about my choices.”
The candy bar wasn’t hired because they’re an “indulgent snacker.” It was hired to “get me through my afternoon slump without requiring any thought.” Same person, different context, different Job. For more on this, check out Milky Way or Snickers case study.
What is someone hiring your product to do?
Jobs to be Done provides a different lens. Instead of asking “who is buying our product?”, it asks “what Job is our product being hired to do?”
This subtle shift in perspective unlocks tremendous insight.
A Job represents the progress a person is trying to make in a particular circumstance. It has functional dimensions (the practical task), but also emotional and social dimensions (how it makes you feel and how others perceive you). All three dimensions matter.
For example, when someone buys premium ice cream, they’re not just hiring it to satisfy hunger. They might be hiring it to:
- Reward themselves after a tough day
- Create a special moment with their family
- Indulge without the hassle of going out for dessert
- Signal to guests that they value quality
Different circumstances, different Jobs… and potentially different products hired to do them. The circumstance is key. The circumstance changes everything.
Why JTBD matters for CPG innovation
The CPG landscape has never been more challenging. Digital-native brands are disrupting categories. Retailer private labels are squeezing margins. Consumer loyalties shift with each new trend.
In this environment, incremental innovations based on traditional research won’t cut it. They’re not.
In my opinion, Jobs offers CPG innovators three advantages:
1. Uncovering non-obvious competition
When you understand the Job, you realize your competition isn’t just other brands in your category. Your competition is anything that can do the Job.
Your premium pasta sauce isn’t just competing with other jarred sauces; it’s competing with meal kits, takeout, homemade alternatives, and even restaurants that might do the same Job better.
A client of ours discovered their organic baby food wasn’t mainly competing with conventional baby food. The real competition was parents making homemade purees because the Job wasn’t just “feed my baby healthy food” but “be the kind of parent who provides the absolute best for my child.” That’s a different Job.
For the case study on this, check out the milkshake story – the real example based on mine and Clay Christensen’s work.
2. Identifying innovation opportunities
Jobs reveals underserved needs that traditional research misses.
One client discovered consumers were “hiring” their snack product not primarily for taste (which is where they’d focused all their innovation) but for the Job of “giving myself permission to take a break.”
This insight led to packaging innovations designed to reinforce the ritual aspect of the snack moment, creating significantly more value than yet another flavor extension would have.
They stopped competing on taste and started competing on ritual.
3. Creating more effective marketing
When marketing speaks to the Job, not the product attributes, it resonates more deeply.
A beverage brand I worked with shifted from marketing functional benefits (hydration, vitamins) to the Job their product was being hired for: “helping me feel like I’ve got my life together when everything is chaotic.”
This simple shift in messaging drove double-digit growth without any product changes. Without any product changes at all. Just changing how they talked about it. Because they finally understood the Job.
But it can be used further. We know that digital has impacted how today’s CPG customers search and shop for products. Meet your customers where they’re at, don’t just repeat what you’ve always done.
How to apply Jobs theory in CPG innovation
If you’re ready to supplement your traditional research with Jobs Theory, here’s how to start:
Listen for struggling moments
Jobs become visible when people struggle. Struggle is the signal. Listen for phrases like “I was frustrated by…” or “I wish there was a way to…” These signal unmet needs that represent innovation opportunities.
In a recent JTBD interview, we heard: “I was frustrated by having to choose between taking time to cook a healthy dinner and helping my kids with homework.” This revealed a Job that existing meal solutions weren’t fulfilling. That’s a struggling moment; that’s where innovation happens.
Focus on the timeline
Traditional research often captures a snapshot in time. Jobs Theory examines the entire timeline of an experience – the “before,” “during,” and “after” of a purchase decision. The whole timeline matters.
One snack brand discovered the critical moment wasn’t consumption but purchase. The Job was “help me feel prepared for unexpected hunger so that I can keep working without having to stop to eat” rather than “satisfy my current hunger.”
This insight completely changed their innovation and distribution strategy.
Understand the forces of progress
For every Job, there are four forces at play:
- Push: What problem is pushing them to make a change?
- Pull: What’s attracting them to a new solution?
- Anxiety: What worries do they have about changing?
- Habit: What’s keeping them in their current behavior?
All four forces matter. All four.
A dairy alternative brand I worked with found that environmental concerns were pushing consumers away from dairy (push), and health benefits were pulling them toward alternatives (pull).
But anxiety about taste and cooking performance was holding them back. This insight led to product reformulation and educational content that directly addressed these anxieties.
Making the shift from what you’re used to
I’m not suggesting you abandon traditional research entirely. Demographics, purchase behavior, and sensory testing all have their place. But without the JTBD perspective, you’re missing the crucial “why” behind consumer choices. The why is everything.
The most successful CPG innovators I know use traditional methods to understand what people are buying and the Jobs Theory framework to understand why they’re buying it. This combination provides a complete picture that drives meaningful innovation.
After implementing this approach, one of our clients saw their innovation success rate triple and their time-to-market cut in half. Not because they collected more data, but because they collected better insights that revealed what consumers were really hiring their products to do. Better insights, not more data.
CPG innovators can’t afford to base decisions on incomplete insights. It’s time to ask not just who is buying your products, but what Job they’re hiring them to do.
Your consumers are trying to make progress in their lives. Understanding that progress is the key to innovation that truly matters.
Progress, not products. That’s what it all comes down to.