When a category is crowded with similar offerings, it’s easy to assume everything has already been done. But that’s rarely the case. Most markets, no matter how mature, still contain untapped potential – also known as white space opportunities. The challenge is recognizing where those opportunities live.

That’s exactly where the Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) framework comes in. Rather than focusing on products or features, JTBD shifts attention to the underlying goals customers are trying to achieve in their lives. This perspective often reveals unmet needs, pain points, or workaround solutions that traditional research might miss – especially in saturated markets where differentiation is subtle.

Why Categories Feel Saturated – and How JTBD Challenges That

In many product categories, especially those that have seen years of innovation, most brands compete on incremental improvements – faster, cheaper, sleeker. But customers don't think purely in terms of product specs. They think in terms of outcomes: “What am I trying to accomplish?” “How does this fit into my life?” “What struggles do I still face, even with current options?”

Jobs To Be Done flips the script from product-focused thinking to purpose-focused thinking. That often uncovers entirely new areas of demand in even the most seemingly mature categories.

What JTBD Research Uncovers

When done thoughtfully, JTBD-focused customer research can reveal:

• New segments based on common goals or struggles – not just age or income
• Hidden frustrations customers have learned to tolerate due to lack of better options
• Unconventional solutions customers create on their own (i.e., DIY fixes or hacks)
• Timely triggers that prompt someone to switch products or start shopping

For example, in a saturated market like home cleaning products, JTBD research might reveal that what people truly want isn’t a better-smelling cleaner, but a faster way to reset their space mentally after a chaotic day. That deeper job points to white space innovation in simplifying routines –, not just improving formulas.

Using JTBD Data to Guide Product Innovation

Once these jobs are uncovered, teams can begin exploring white space opportunities by asking:

• Which jobs are poorly served by current solutions?
• Where do customers struggle, improvise, or switch repeatedly?
• Which jobs are overlooked by competitors simply because they don’t fit traditional category expectations?

By aligning product development to solve real jobs in accessible, frictionless ways, brands can create solutions that feel truly breakthrough – even in mature markets. At SIVO, we often guide innovation teams through this process, helping them pair consumer insights with actionable strategy grounded in the JTBD framework.

From a market research perspective, JTBD is one of the best methods for finding market white space that actual customers care about. The job becomes the new unit of analysis – and with it comes clearer direction for innovation, messaging, and product positioning.

One of the most valuable aspects of the Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) framework is its ability to bring clarity to the difference between what customers ask for and what they actually need. In market research, this distinction is vital – especially in categories where buyers have plenty of product options but still feel dissatisfied.

By exploring the 'job' a customer is trying to complete, rather than just their product preferences, JTBD helps uncover unmet and underserved needs. These are areas where people feel friction, experience gaps, or struggle to complete a goal – even with many existing choices available. For innovation teams, this information is gold.

Customer Jobs: The Missing Link in Understanding Needs

At its core, a "job" refers to the progress someone is trying to make in a given context. This could be functional (e.g., "I want to prepare healthy meals faster"), emotional (e.g., "I want to feel like a good parent"), or social (e.g., "I want to appear organized to my colleagues").

When traditional research focuses only on habits or surface preferences, it may overlook the deeper desire driving purchasing decisions. JTBD bridges that gap with qualitative and quantitative research that explores motivation, context, and desired outcomes.

Underserved vs. Unmet Needs: What’s the Difference?

In the realm of product development and market innovation, it's helpful to distinguish:

• Unmet needs: No current solution exists that satisfies the job. Customers may be unaware that better is possible.
• Underserved needs: Some solutions exist, but they come with significant compromises – high cost, complexity, or trade-offs.

For example, consider the fitness tech category. A consumer might say, “There are tons of apps for workouts, but I still can’t stay motivated.” The real job isn’t tracking calories – it’s staying on track with long-term goals. While the market seems saturated, this emotional job is still underserved and a strong candidate for white space exploration.

How Research Illuminates These Gaps

SIVO Insights often conducts customer research through a JTBD lens to highlight patterns across users experiencing the same friction. This could involve:

• In-depth interviews exploring "why" someone bought or abandoned a product
• Journey-mapping exercises that identify bottlenecks along the way
• Need-state segmentation showing which jobs are prioritized by different audience clusters

What results is a more focused, actionable understanding of where to aim innovation efforts. You're no longer guessing whether people need a brighter button or a new ad campaign – you're designing to solve for real frustrations and muted desires.

In crowded categories, marketing and product ideas often default to what competitors are already doing. But by zooming in on what isn't being done well (or at all), JTBD research helps you identify underserved customer needs with clarity. That’s where the most promising growth opportunities lie.

In competitive and saturated markets, breakthrough innovation doesn’t always come from flashy features or bigger budgets – it comes from better understanding customers. The Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) framework helps teams shift focus from what products do to why customers use them. It reveals the circumstances and motivations driving customer choices, making it easier to find gaps where existing solutions fall short.

Reframing Competition Through Customer Jobs

A common challenge in saturated categories is that everyone is solving the same problem in a similar way. JTBD helps teams reframe competition by asking: what job is the customer really hiring this product to do? For example, someone buying a protein bar isn’t just looking for a snack – they might be trying to bridge hunger between meetings without crashing later. That deeper job reveals white space opportunities where current options may miss the mark.

From Incremental to Meaningful Innovation

By using JTBD, innovation teams can identify hidden or underserved needs – not just surface-level requests. This shifts product development away from minor improvements and toward meaningful differentiation. Instead of asking “what features should we add?”, JTBD encourages asking “what struggles do our customers face before, during, and after using our product – and how can we solve for those?”.

How JTBD Inspires Product Ideas

JTBD research often uncovers pain points and workarounds in the customer journey – areas ripe for innovation. This can lead to ideas for:

• New products that address underserved jobs
• Improved packaging, delivery, or pricing models
• Better messaging that aligns with the true value customers seek

Because JTBD focuses on the broader “job” rather than any single product category, it opens the door for cross-industry innovation. A food brand, for example, may realize they’re competing not just with other snacks, but with time-saving apps or routines that help people stay focused and energized.

Ultimately, using the JTBD framework for market innovation isn’t about guessing what customers want – it’s about discovering what they need but can’t easily articulate. By grounding innovation in these unmet customer needs, brands can confidently explore white space where demand already exists – even in crowded markets.

The abstract benefits of JTBD become concrete when we look at real cases of white space discovery. Across industries, JTBD has helped businesses reimagine established categories and deliver smarter solutions that customers didn’t even know they needed. Let's take a look at some examples where applying JTBD would be useful:

Example 1: Quick-Service Restaurants – Competing with Home Dining

One fast-casual restaurant brand used JTBD research to understand what “job” customers were hiring meals to do. While traditional data focused on flavor and service speed, JTBD revealed a deeper motivation: helping busy parents feel they were “doing their job” feeding their families well, without sacrificing time or nutrition. This insight sparked the creation of balanced family meal bundles that could be picked up quickly – targeting a white space untapped by fast food or grocery chains.

Example 2: Financial Services – Emotional Drivers Behind Budgeting Tools

A fintech company applied JTBD to learn why people used (or avoided) budgeting apps. Traditional tools focused on tracking expenses, but deeper research uncovered a bigger “job”: reducing guilt and anxiety about money. Addressing this emotional need, the company designed features like positive reinforcement and stress-reducing tips. The result? Increased engagement and loyalty, all from identifying unmet emotional jobs in a crowded space.

Example 3: Home Care Products – New Solutions for Everyday Struggles

In a saturated category of household cleaners, one brand used JTBD to uncover frustrations not with cleaning performance, but with the unpredictable availability of products and fear of running out. The job wasn’t just “clean my home” – it was “keep my home feeling reliably ready for guests or kids.” This inspired a subscription model and stable inventory strategy, capturing white space between product and experience.

Key Takeaways from These Examples

• Jobs can be functional, emotional, or social – understanding all three unlocks richer insight.
• JTBD isn’t limited to high-tech industries – it’s powerful across sectors.
• Customer research guided by JTBD leads to more resonant messaging, not just product innovation.

Each of these examples shows how Jobs To Be Done finds white space in saturated markets by peeling back surface-level behavior to understand core motivations. Whether it's rethinking category norms or deriving new growth strategies, JTBD delivers the clarity needed for smarter, customer-led innovations.

For product development teams, the biggest risk is building something that no one truly needs. The JTBD framework helps mitigate that risk by grounding product efforts in what genuinely matters to customers – their goals, struggles, and the contexts in which they make decisions. Simply put, JTBD makes product development more strategic and less speculative.

From Features to Purpose

Teams often focus on functionality – adding features, enhancing design, or matching competitors. JTBD shifts the conversation from “what should we build?” to “what problems are customers trying to solve?”. It aligns product features with human purpose. When teams understand a product’s job in customers’ lives, they make more informed, impactful decisions during roadmap planning, prototyping, and testing.

Supporting Diverse Stages of Development

Whether teams are designing a new concept or revising a mature product, Jobs To Be Done supports every development phase:

• Early-stage discovery: Reveal gaps in the market and identify white space opportunities before committing resources
• Mid-stage ideation: Prioritize features and solutions that solve meaningful customer jobs, not just obvious wants
• Late-stage validation: Ensure your offering aligns with real-world use cases and strengthens adoption

This makes JTBD one of the best methods for finding market white space and a strong ally in lean, human-centered product design strategies.

Improved Team Collaboration

The JTBD lens serves as a shared framework across marketing, design, and R&D. Instead of siloed efforts, teams collaborate around a common understanding of the customer’s job. This not only strengthens the product but also improves communication between departments.

Building for Longevity

Innovations that emerge from JTBD tend to stand the test of time. Why? Because they’re solving stable, deeply-rooted jobs that don’t change as fast as trends. As saturated markets evolve, products built on JTBD insights remain relevant by consistently addressing the core needs driving behavior.

Used effectively, the JTBD strategy for competitive product categories helps businesses design with empathy, reduce wasted development efforts, and uncover growth pathways that would otherwise be invisible through traditional methods.