Traditional market research often focuses on who the customer is – their age, gender, income, or preferences. Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) takes a different approach by asking a more powerful question: What is the customer trying to achieve in a given situation?

Instead of just tracking trends or analyzing customer satisfaction scores, JTBD searches for the deeper motivations behind a decision. These are often subtle, context-specific, and driven by goals the customer may not even fully articulate.

Understanding the "Job" Behind the Purchase

The core idea of JTBD is that people “hire” products and services to complete a job – a desired outcome in their life. This could be solving a problem, reaching a goal, or avoiding something unpleasant.

For example, someone might buy a high-protein snack not just because they’re hungry, but because they’re trying to avoid an afternoon energy crash before a big meeting. That goal – stable energy before a critical moment – is the real job that product was hired to do.

Digging Beneath the Surface

Because JTBD dives directly into the context of a customer’s decision, it often reveals emotional and situational motivations that standard surveys miss. These might include:

• Desire for control or confidence in uncertain situations
• Need to avoid risk, stress, or inconvenience
• Effort to create a certain identity or perception (social motivation)

By looking at what was going on in the customer’s life at the time of their decision, JTBD insights uncover not only what someone did, but why they did it – in their words, at their moment of need.

More Than Just Preferences: Identifying Pain and Progress

Jobs To Be Done also tells us about friction points – the moments in a customer’s journey where something doesn’t work as expected. These pain points are often tied to unmet needs or workarounds that build frustration over time. Recognizing these insights opens the door to better product design, messaging, and service.

In this way, understanding customer behavior with JTBD allows companies to align their offerings with real-world user needs and expectations – creating higher engagement, value, and loyalty.

Why Hidden Motivations Matter

Uncovering hidden customer needs with JTBD isn’t just insightful – it’s practical. Businesses that understand what their customers are really trying to accomplish can:

• Design more relevant solutions
• Position offerings with greater emotional impact
• Create stronger connections based on shared goals

Ultimately, Jobs To Be Done provides a consumer-centric lens that moves beyond assumptions and sheds light on the true factors driving purchase behavior.

Traditional market research has served businesses well for decades, offering structured ways to gather feedback and measure performance. Surveys, interviews, and focus groups help capture customer opinions, track awareness, and test product concepts. However, these methods can sometimes miss a crucial piece of the puzzle – the underlying context behind a decision.

In real life, customer choices often don’t follow a tidy questionnaire. They're influenced by moments, pressures, and priorities that standard research frameworks don’t always capture. That’s why many companies are turning to Jobs To Be Done to go deeper.

Gaps in Traditional Research Approaches

Let’s look at a few reasons why traditional methods may fall short in understanding buying decisions:

• Assumes rational decision-making: Surveys often work best when people can clearly explain their choices. But most decisions – especially those involving emotion or habit – aren’t made rationally.
• Lacks situational context: A question like “Would you buy Product X again?” doesn't tell us when or why they chose it in the first place.
• Misses unmet needs: Traditional data might highlight what’s liked or disliked, but it may not capture what’s missing or what a customer wishes existed.
• Focuses on past behavior, not progress: Usage data tells you what someone did – not what they were trying to accomplish.

How JTBD Fills the Gaps

Jobs To Be Done starts by identifying decision-making moments, then works backward to understand the desired outcome. It explores all the push and pull factors involved in a choice, including emotional drivers, competing alternatives, and situational constraints.

For instance, imagine a parent switching from one meal delivery service to another. Traditional market research might tell you they switched because the new option was cheaper. JTBD, however, might reveal that the real motivator was reliability during a hectic family schedule – not cost. That insight changes how you design features, communicate benefits, and prioritize in product strategy.

Making Decisions Visible

The strength of JTBD lies in mapping out the full journey behind a decision. It highlights moments when people begin looking for a new solution (the trigger), what alternatives they consider (competitive landscape), and what tipping point convinces them to act (purchase motivation).

Business leaders who regularly ask, “What does Jobs To Be Done reveal that we’re not seeing elsewhere?” gain access to a more holistic view of the customer experience. This can lead directly to:

• Improved product design and positioning
• More accurate customer segmentation
• Deeper empathy and connection with users

So while traditional research methods still play an important role, they may benefit from being augmented with JTBD insights. Together, they offer both quantifiable trends and the hidden motivations guiding customer behavior.

In every buying experience, there are moments that slow down or complicate a customer’s progress – these are called friction points. Unlike traditional market research, which often concentrates on what customers say they want or like, Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) takes a deeper look at the reasons behind stalled progress. By understanding customer motivation and behavior in real-world contexts, JTBD uncovers the hidden blockers that prevent users from making a purchase or enjoying a product fully.

Friction can take many forms: an unclear benefit, a confusing process, an emotional hesitation, or even an unspoken social concern. While traditional surveys may miss these subtleties, JTBD interviews and analysis reveal them through individual stories of struggling moments.

How JTBD Identifies Friction You Might Overlook

• Contextual interviews show the full journey, not just when or why someone chooses a product, but what happens before, during, and after.
• Emotional tensions, like the fear of making the wrong decision or anxiety around switching, come to the surface.
• Functional breakdowns are spotted – such as when a product doesn’t quite fit into a person’s day-to-day workflow.

For example, a consumer may delay buying a new fitness app because they’re unsure it will sync with their existing smartwatch. That small, overlooked concern becomes a big point of friction. Traditional research might treat this as a product feature request, but JTBD reveals it as a key part of the decision-making process – a reason not to buy.

Recognizing these breakdowns through JTBD helps brands design smoother experiences. By mapping out the purchase journey through the lens of what job the customer is hiring the product to do, businesses can remove roadblocks that traditional research might not even notice.

If you’ve ever launched a new offering only to realize later that adoption is slow or inconsistent, it may be a sign that unseen friction is at play. JTBD gives a framework to find and fix those blockers before they impact your success.

One of the biggest benefits of JTBD in consumer insights is the clarity it provides to product and marketing teams. By focusing on why customers make certain choices, and what progress they’re hoping to achieve, Jobs To Be Done delivers strategic insights that go beyond preferences or satisfaction scores.

Unlike traditional market research, which often asks “What do you like?” or “Would you recommend this?”, JTBD asks deeper questions like “What was happening in your life that made you start looking for a different solution?” or “What nearly held you back from switching?”. These kinds of questions reveal what truly drives buying decisions.

How JTBD Shapes Business Decisions

With insights rooted in actual decision behavior, businesses can:

• Develop features that solve real pain points, not just add bells and whistles. For example, if JTBD reveals customers “hire” a budgeting app because they feel financially overwhelmed, then mental simplicity – not advanced tools – may become the core design goal.
• Craft messaging that speaks to the job, not the product. Instead of promoting “24/7 support,” a brand can position itself as “helpful during unexpected travel delays” – aligning with the job the service is hired to complete.
• Prioritize segments by unmet needs, not just demographics. Understanding hidden customer needs with JTBD allows for smarter targeting based on customer intent and context.

Imagine trying to fix sagging customer retention by adjusting pricing or launching loyalty programs. JTBD might instead reveal that customers leave because their job to be done has changed – they no longer need the service in the same way. The insight isn’t about price sensitivity; it’s about shifting goals.

This is why JTBD insights are especially valuable for innovation and long-term growth. They bring focus to what matters most to the customer at critical moments in their journey. Whether repositioning a product, launching something new, or reshaping a value proposition, JTBD ensures your strategy aligns with real-world demand.

JTBD is an especially powerful tool when you need to go beyond what people say and discover the real reasons behind their actions. If you’re unsure when to use Jobs To Be Done over traditional market research methods, consider the type of question you’re asking. JTBD is best suited for uncovering deep motivations, hidden triggers, and moments of change – the things that surveys or surface-level interviews often fail to capture.

Scenarios Where JTBD Uncovers Critical Insights

You may want to prioritize JTBD when:

• Customers are switching from or to another brand and you want to understand their decision-making process.
• Adoption or retention is below expectations, and you suspect there are friction points or unmet expectations in the journey.
• You’re entering a new market and need to understand user needs through a fresh lens – beyond demographics or categories.
• Existing research still leaves gaps about why customers act differently than they say they will.

Timing matters, too. JTBD is particularly useful in early stages of innovation, during brand repositioning efforts, or when trying to understand the underlying drivers of churn, loyalty, or product switching. It reframes product and marketing questions not around “what should we make?” but rather “what job would people hire this product to do – and what causes them to hire or fire it?”

Unlike traditional research methods that offer general satisfaction metrics, JTBD paints a more human picture of progress and frustration. It spotlights the forces pulling someone toward or away from a solution – including emotional resistance, practical barriers, or social pressures.

If timing, motivation, and unmet needs are blurry in your current insights, JTBD can bring them into sharp focus, offering concrete direction for both short-term and strategic planning.