Summary: This article is part of our free market research guide. It looks at some tips in relation to your findings from your market research.
For each job, it’s the market researcher’s role to find out what the outcomes needed to perform it well actually are. In each case, they need to look at whether the consumer seeks to minimize or maximise these outcomes and exactly by how much.
For example, for the job of cutting an electric line with a saw four outcomes maybe – “minimising the amount of kick from a saw”, “minimizing the amount of time the cut line is blocked”, “minimizing the weight of the saw”, “minimizing the mess created whilst cutting”. So ensure that you dig down until you get actionable units of data. If a consumer says “minimise the sawdust that gets in the way” – in the way of what? How much is acceptable? Why is that important to you? If they can’t give a measurable unit, can they compare it to other solutions, e.g. better than x?
Another key question is “What other outcomes does this outcome help achieve?”
Outcomes can sometimes reveal other outcomes. So in the example above if you ask what outcome does “minimise the sawdust that gets in the way” achieve they will say “increasing the time I can see the cutting line.” So you have another outcome “Maximise the amount of time I can see the cutting line”.
Try and capture data on all desired outcomes. Only then can you know which are important and underserved. Remember, like Ultimate Goals and jobs, outcomes can be functional, emotional/psychological, time or convenience, financial or social and the metrics to measure their success must be defined by the consumer! This is how they judge the value of a product or service!
Be careful not to assume things. If a consumer says “identify plagiarism quickly” What sources do they mean from? What exactly is plagiarism? How do we measure quick? What exactly is quick? Subjectivity is the enemy of market research!
If quick means 5 minutes and it’s twice as quick as anything else on the market, there’s no need to go to the expense and time of developing something that scans in 5 seconds, especially when doing so would make it so expensive most people would not buy it. A competitor that makes the 5 minute scanner may be able to beat you on price and thus ultimately value because they are closer to the performance the consumer is willing to pay for.
If an airline passenger said “minimise the time taken to check in” – what would they mean? Queuing? The time spent with staff? Finding the help desk? Is 5 secs, 30 secs or 5 minutes acceptable in each or longer? Or is it quicker than the lines around them, or a combination of all these factors?
For example a pesticide company found after its market research that the biggest Value Factor was buying a pesticide the worked really well. It went away and developed the most effective bug killer ever – in terms of percentage of bugs killed when sprayed upon them it was by far and away the best on the market in performance. However sales were disappointing. When consumers were quizzed through market research, they remarked that the spray did not work. The company knew this wasn’t true, yet the problem was that it killed bugs over one to two days after treatment. An important distinction was found – consumers judged effectiveness not by the likelihood of the bugs dying alone, but also and more importantly by the speed at which they died. The need was not so much to kill bugs but to kill them quickly, indeed almost instantly.
Also, don’t let consumers use words like “eliminate” or “prevent” unduly – they imply a target of zero, which may not be that critical! If a consumer says this, ask them if they really mean this or they mean minimise and to what level. Eliminate sound, is very different to “minimise it to a level the human ear cannot detect.”
When captured properly desired outcomes for jobs stay stable over time. They are fundamental measures of performance that are inherent to the execution of a specific job. They are the same now as 100 years ago! Take the job of cleaning your teeth – these functional jobs were and still are removing plaque, fresh breath, and protecting gums! Another, but emotional job, is “feel like you have cleaned your teeth” – one of the criticisms I have heard levied at electric toothbrushes is that you don’t feel like you have cleaned your teeth and I agree! Perhaps a hybrid shaped model would be the answer?
If anything does change with these jobs, it’s only the priority that these jobs take due to trends, for example, more people might value the job of “protecting the environment” now when they buy a car then they did 10 years ago. The functions to satisfy them, and indeed the products are always changing and improving, and it’s your job to make them and make them better than the rest.
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