The Role of JTBD Mapping in Market Research

• Reveals Unmet Needs: By charting job steps, you can identify where customers face friction or lack of options – sparking ideas for product innovation.
• Guides Product Strategy: A JTBD map prioritizes what users really need to succeed, helping teams focus on features that make a measurable impact.
• Strengthens Messaging: When marketing speaks to the job being done, instead of just product specs, campaigns resonate more deeply with customers.
• Connects the Full Journey: JTBD connects moments before, during, and after product use – providing a full-circle view of the experience.

Why It's Useful for Beginners

Real-World Applications of a JTBD Map

• Product managers use it to prioritize features based on critical steps in the customer job.
• Marketers develop more targeted campaigns by understanding the emotional drivers behind customer goals.
• Design and UX teams identify where customers get stuck and simplify task flows.
• Researchers structure interview or survey questions around job steps, opening up clearer insight paths.

1. Choose a Customer Job to Focus On

2. Identify the Main Stages of the Job

3. Break Down Each Stage into Sub-Steps

4. Capture Emotional and Social Drivers

5. Visualize the Map Clearly

6. Validate with Real Customers

To create a meaningful Jobs to Be Done (JTBD) map, it’s important to recognize that customer needs go beyond simple tasks. The JTBD framework categorizes these needs into three layers: functional, emotional, and social jobs. Identifying and mapping these types of jobs helps you uncover the deeper motivations that drive customer behavior, which is essential for product innovation and user experience design.

Functional Jobs: What the Customer Aims to Do

Functional jobs are the core tasks or problems customers are trying to solve. These are the most straightforward jobs – think of them as the “doing” part of the customer journey. For example, if someone is shopping for a lawnmower, their functional job might be “cut the grass efficiently.”

In your job map, these functional tasks often form the central spine or sequence: starting a task, executing it, and completing it. Understanding them sets the foundation for developing practical, fit-for-purpose features or services.

Emotional Jobs: How the Customer Wants to Feel

Emotional jobs capture how customers want to feel while performing a job. These can be personal (feeling competent or relaxed) or interpersonal (feeling respected or connected). Using our lawnmower example, the emotional job could be “feel good about maintaining a nice yard” or “feel competent using equipment without frustration.”

These motivations are often unspoken, but they matter deeply. Mapping emotional jobs alongside functional ones helps teams design experiences that resonate on a human level – not just logical efficiency.

Social Jobs: How the Customer Wants to Be Perceived

Social jobs are about customers’ desire to shape how others see them. This could be professional status, community standing, or lifestyle expression. Someone using a high-end lawnmower may want to be seen as “a responsible and successful homeowner.”

These roles often emerge in B2C or lifestyle-focused products but can appear in B2B scenarios, too – such as a product manager wanting to “look innovative” by choosing the right software vendor.

Why This Breakout Matters in JTBD Mapping

By breaking down customer jobs into these layers, your JTBD map evolves from a task list into a multidimensional representation of user needs and aspirations. This gives product teams, marketers, and researchers a richer view of the customer journey and helps develop offerings that connect with people’s real-world goals.

Including functional, emotional, and social jobs in your mapping exercise supports better consumer insights and uncovers strategic research questions worth exploring through market research. It also ensures your solutions don’t just “work” – they work in a way that feels right for your customer.

Creating a Jobs to Be Done map is only valuable if it helps you uncover useful insights and guide action. That’s why clarity and structure are key. Whether you're using sticky notes, whiteboarding software, or even spreadsheets, the organization of your job map matters. Here’s how to keep it simple, clean, and effective.

Keep Sub-Jobs Distinct and Ordered

Break down customer tasks into clearly defined steps. Each sub-job should represent a discrete action or decision point in the customer journey. Arrange them in the logical order they naturally occur. For example:

• Identify a need ("I need to save time on meal prep")
• Research options ("Which services deliver pre-made meals?")
• Choose a solution
• Onboard or trial the product
• Evaluate satisfaction

This clear sequencing helps product and research teams pinpoint where friction or unmet needs occur.

Use Simple Language

Avoid internal jargon or technical terms your customers wouldn’t use. Keep descriptions short and intuitive – ideally readable at a glance. This makes your JTBD map easier to share across teams and more usable during strategy conversations or consumer insights reviews.

Color Code Job Types

To instantly show the difference between functional, emotional, and social jobs, use color coding. For example, blue for functional, green for emotional, and orange for social. This adds a quick layer of interpretation and makes the different job dimensions visually stand out.

Don’t Over-Map

Begin with what’s most important. Trying to map every possible touchpoint or variation can quickly become overwhelming. Start with one primary job (or key journey) and map that well. You can build out branches or alternatives once the core structure is in place.

Validate with Real Customers

Even the best JTBD framework benefits from real-world input. Be sure to validate your map with actual customers – whether through interviews, usability testing, or qualitative research. Have you captured their true process and motivations? Are there steps you’ve missed?

Remember, your job map isn’t a static deliverable. Update it based on new learnings, shifts in user behavior, or changes in the market. When used right, your JTBD map becomes a living document that integrates well with ongoing market research and strategy work.

A well-built Jobs to Be Done (JTBD) map is more than a research tool – it’s a strategic compass. By visually mapping customer jobs, product teams, marketers, and business leaders gain a clear path to innovation that’s rooted in actual user needs, not assumptions or trends.

Spot Gaps and Unmet Needs

One of the biggest benefits of JTBD mapping is that it reveals where customers struggle or settle for a workaround. These gaps – places where existing solutions fall short – often signal high-potential areas for product innovation. Whether it’s a step that’s confusing, a job that’s frustrating, or a need that goes unrecognized, JTBD maps help you surface the whitespace.

Prioritize Ideas with Confidence

When you understand the relative importance and frequency of different job steps, you can prioritize product ideas or design updates with clarity. Your team isn’t just guessing at what will matter – you’re aligning around what actually improves the customer journey.

Some questions a JTBD map helps answer:

• Which job steps are most critical to user satisfaction?
• Are any emotional or social needs being ignored?
• Where could simplifying the process create delight?
• Do some customer segments complete the job differently?

Support Cross-Team Alignment

Because JTBD maps are visual and intuitive, they act as a shared language across departments. Product managers, marketers, UX designers, and researchers can view the same map and align on opportunities. This reduces the risk of siloed decision-making and ensures the customer journey stays central to the conversation.

Build Future-Ready Strategy

JTBD thinking also supports longer-term strategic planning. As markets evolve, the core jobs your customers are trying to do often stay the same – but how they do them may change. Having a strong job map helps your team anticipate shifts and explore emerging solutions without losing sight of what matters most to users.

Whether you’re fine-tuning an existing offering or exploring a new business model, a JTBD map grounds your strategy in empathy and evidence. At SIVO Insights, we’ve seen how pairing job mapping with deep consumer insights work unlocks fresh thinking and fuels innovation in even the most crowded markets.