Customers choose progress, not products
“People don’t simply buy or pick products or services; they pull them into their lives to make progress.”
At a glance
- Customers do not open their wallets simply to own a set of product features. They choose products and services to move forward in a particular circumstance.
- Clayton Christensen’s Jobs to Be Done Theory asks us to look beyond age or occupation and understand what moved a person to act, and what progress they brought a solution into their life to achieve. Good marketing does not begin by explaining what we built.
- It begins with the change the customer is trying to complete.
Today’s reflection
Clayton Christensen and his coauthors described the progress a customer seeks in a particular circumstance as a ‘job’ in the 2016 Harvard Business Review article ‘Know Your Customers’ Jobs to Be Done’ and in Competing Against Luck. Functional needs matter, but social meaning and emotional pressure also shape a choice. In a housing example presented by the Christensen Institute, the decisive obstacle was not a missing feature in the condominium. It was the anxiety of deciding what to do with a dining table that carried family memories. The effective solution helped people move their lives by providing moving and storage support. Today’s English sentence is a direct quotation from the Christensen Institute’s official explanation of the theory, not a verbatim line attributed solely to Christensen in his book. The Korean is a natural translation.
- The real competition is not limited to similar products. A colleague, a notebook, search, a general-purpose AI tool, or simply postponing the decision can all be alternatives hired for the same progress.
- Circumstances often explain behavior better than demographics. Two people of the same age and occupation can choose entirely different solutions depending on what has become difficult and why they need to move now.
- Before asking which feature a customer wants, listen for the moment change began. When we understand what first made the old way feel insufficient, we can find the progress and anxiety beneath a feature request.
New services fail for more reasons than missing features. Builders see programs, screens, and capabilities; customers see whether a real source of struggle is becoming smaller. For a service that supports judgment, the customer is not buying a number of questions or an AI feature. They are buying progress from a tangled choice toward clear criteria and a next action they can own. Once that progress is explicit, the price, message, experience, and true competition become easier to see.
Practice for today
Think of one customer or participant and write four lines
- What circumstance prompted them to act?
- What progress are they trying to make?
- What makes them hesitate?
and ‘What alternative are they relying on now?’ Then rewrite the offer in one sentence: ‘For someone in [circumstance], this helps them make [desired progress] while reducing [feared cost].’ In an interview, replace ‘Would you use this feature?’ with ‘When did you first realize that your existing way was no longer enough?’
Question for today
Am I explaining the product I built, or understanding the progress the customer is trying to make in their life?
Readers’ Reflections
What did this bring to mind? A few lines are enough.
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