You did everything right. You talked to customers. You asked them what they wanted. They told you faster, cheaper, easier. You built exactly that. And now it’s sitting on the shelf while they continue using the old solution they complained about.
Welcome to the symmetry problem or, how it’s also known, the consumer behavior lie
The lie we tell ourselves about consumer behavior
We assume that if consumers have a problem, they want a solution for that problem. It takes too long, so they want it faster. It’s too expensive, so they want it cheaper. This feels logical. It’s how we were trained to think about product development.
But I think there’s a fundamental flaw in this thinking.
When you look at consumers from the supply side (from your side of the table) you assume symmetry. You assume that the problem they articulate maps directly to the solution they need. Most purchases, though, have some angle of irrationality to them. There’s a lack of symmetry between what people say the problem is and what will actually cause them to switch.
That’s why your product is failing.
Context drives behavior, not attributes
Think about steak versus hot dogs. If you ask someone which they prefer, they’ll probably say steak. Better quality, better taste, more of a treat. So you’d assume that given the choice, people would always pick steak over hot dogs, right?
Wrong.
But try and picture this: you’ve got four kids, they play hockey, you’re running around all day. The last thing you want to do is come home, deal with homework, and somehow pull together dinner fast enough that everyone will actually eat it.
You need to get homework done and get everyone to bed. If you try to make steak in that situation, it takes too long. You don’t know if all the kids will eat it. You don’t want to waste it because it’s expensive.
Now picture a different night. You’ve accomplished something. You want to reward yourself. You’ve got time to sit down, enjoy a meal with others, maybe pair it with a nice wine. Hot dogs in that situation? They don’t work either.
It’s not that people like steak or they like hot dogs. It’s when and where and why they choose one over the other.
Context drives the decision, not the attributes of the product.
You asked what they wanted. You should have asked why they switched.
The problem with most market research is that it asks people to predict their own behavior. What features do you want? How important is speed? Would you buy this if we made it?
But people can’t tell you what they’re going to do next. They can only tell you about what they know—the problems they have right now. They’ll tell you what they don’t want more than what they do want. And when they do suggest solutions, those solutions are based on their current frame of reference, not on what will actually cause them to make progress.
That’s why you end up with products that look good on paper but don’t sell. You built what they said they wanted, not what would actually cause them to say “today’s the day I’m going to try something new.”
The real question is what did they fire?
When someone buys your competitor’s product, or when they stay with the old solution, or when they hire some workaround that looks nothing like what you built, they’re making a choice. They’re firing one thing and hiring another.
The question isn’t “what do people want?” The question is “what are people going to stop doing when they start using this?”
If you’re building a gym, you’re not just competing with other gyms. You’re competing with getting off the couch. You’re competing with Peloton. You’re competing with running apps. You might even be competing with going to the bar, because for some people, the gym is social first and fitness second.
Understanding the competitive set from the consumer’s perspective – not your industry’s perspective- is where real innovation happens.
Understanding struggling moments, not feature gaps
Every year, about 27,000 new products hit grocery store shelves.
Less than 100 of them make over $20 million.
Why do so many fail?
Because they’re built on the premise of “build it and they will come.” We should try the orange flavor. We should try the grape flavor. We should make a bigger size.
It’s what we call logical incrementalism: making small changes that make sense on a spreadsheet but don’t understand what flavor actually does to help people make progress.
When you walk down the shampoo aisle and see 47,000 options, you don’t think “wow, great choice.” You think “how do I even know which one to pick?”
People don’t want more choice. They want good choice. And good choice comes from understanding the struggling moments in people’s lives—the contexts where they’re trying to make progress and the current solution isn’t good enough.
Stop asking people what they want.
Consumers lie. It’s human nature. Stop asking people what they want. Start asking people who recently switched what caused them to say “today’s the day.”
Talk to people who moved from doing one thing to doing another. Don’t just talk to people who joined gyms. Talk to people who joined gyms and actually worked out. Understand what was happening in their lives that made them finally take action. What were they doing before? What did they fire? What were they worried about? What did they expect the new solution to do?
You’ll find that the language they use to describe their problem is very different from the features and benefits you’ve been shouting. And when you use their language -the words that are in their head -that’s when they go “you know me.”
That’s when symmetry stops mattering. Because you’re no longer trying to map features to problems. You’re understanding the progress people are trying to make and building the solution that actually fits into that moment in their life.
Your product might be exactly what people said they wanted. But if it doesn’t fit the context of when they’re actually going to use it, it doesn’t matter. Context is everything. And context is what you missed.
This article is also available as a podcast: Unpacking Jobs to be Done.