Introduction
Common Customer Segments Overlooked in JTBD Research
Jobs to Be Done research is meant to reveal the real-life “jobs” people are trying to accomplish. But in practice, many JTBD studies focus heavily on known customers or the largest user segments. This often leaves valuable groups out of scope – and with them, valuable insights on unmet needs, barriers to trial, and alternative behaviors.
Who Gets Left Out – And Why
Several customer segments are commonly underrepresented in JTBD research:
- Edge cases: These are individuals whose experiences don’t reflect the norm – perhaps due to accessibility needs, cultural differences, or unique use contexts. While they may not represent the majority, their perspectives can spotlight gaps in design or overlooked use cases.
- Low-income or underrepresented groups: Sometimes excluded due to assumptions about spend potential, these consumers often navigate needs creatively. Understanding how they solve problems can inspire breakthrough innovation at scale.
- Former customers or churned users: People who tried your product and left have stories worth exploring. What job weren’t you doing well enough? What worked better elsewhere?
- One-time or infrequent users: While not loyal customers, these individuals still engage with your product or category – and their sporadic use speaks to unmet motivation or obstacles to adoption.
How Bias in Sampling Shapes Research Outcomes
Unconscious bias can creep into market research decisions. It’s easier to recruit from known user bases or prioritize high-engagement segments. But doing so narrows the scope of inquiry. If your sample only includes satisfied users or the majority demographic, your insights reflect a partial reality.
Addressing bias in market research begins with awareness. Questions to ask include:
- Are we only talking to our most active users?
- What voices are missing from this research – and why?
- Could a different sample population reveal new growth paths?
Why These Voices Matter
By expanding your research lens, you can capture a richer variety of customer needs and experiences. Inclusive Jobs to Be Done research methods give companies a fuller view of the landscape – not just who they serve well but who they could serve better. This opens doors to:
- Identify new growth segments
- Pinpoint barriers to trial or usage
- Innovate beyond the obvious product improvements
Even fringe cases can inspire more universal solutions. As consumer behaviors become more complex and diverse, intentionally seeking out missing customer voices in product development is no longer optional – it's mission-critical to staying relevant.
Why Non-Consumers Hold Key Innovation Opportunities
Non-consumers – those who don’t currently use your product or category – might seem like the least relevant group to study. But in reality, they often hold the keys to your next big idea. When understood through the lens of Jobs to Be Done, these non-users can highlight unmet needs that offer white space for true product innovation.
Why Look Outside Your Existing Customer Base?
Focusing only on current users can lead to an echo chamber. You hear how people are using your solution, but not why others actively avoid or overlook it. This is where non-consumers shine. They can help identify:
- Barriers to entry: What keeps them from trying what you offer? Is it cost, complexity, lack of relevance?
- Unspoken needs: What are they currently doing to solve the same “job”? What tradeoffs are they making?
- New product categories: Their behaviors may reveal nascent demand that hasn’t been formalized into a current offering.
In many cases, non-consumers have jobs they’re trying to get done – they just haven't found a solution that works for them. Studying their workarounds can surface overlooked opportunities that are ripe for innovation research.
Examples of Non-Consumer Insight Power
Consider the rise of digital payment platforms. Before these tools were common, many people – especially in underbanked populations – were excluded from financial services. Studying non-consumers of traditional banking revealed the job to be done: secure, easy, and low-barrier money movement. This insight led to transformative business models.
Or take health and wellness apps. Many wellness platforms serve fitness enthusiasts, but what about people who actively avoid them? Research among these “non-consumers” often reveals barriers like feeling overwhelmed, judged, or out of place. Solutions designed with these blockers in mind can reach new audiences entirely.
How to Include Non-Consumers in JTBD Research
To bring non-consumers into the fold of inclusive Jobs to Be Done research methods, try the following approaches:
- Reframe your screening: Instead of only selecting users, ask broader questions about the challenge they’re trying to solve.
- Explore alternatives: Look at what other tools or behaviors they are “hiring” instead of your solution.
- Be curious, not corrective: Don’t assume the non-consumer just “hasn’t seen the light.” Dig deeper into what they value and need.
Understanding the jobs to be done for underserved markets or overlooked user segments opens up truly transformative insight. These are often the levers that unlock new value propositions, increase inclusion, and widen your overall target audience.
In short, non-consumers help you stop refining what already exists – and start imagining what could exist instead.
Risks of Excluding Edge Cases in Market Research
In Jobs to Be Done (JTBD) research, it's easy to focus on the majority – the core users, the average opinions, and the 'typical' customer journey. While this can yield useful insights, it runs the risk of overlooking valuable opportunities. One critical blind spot lies in ignoring edge cases – those users who behave differently, fall outside common demographics, or use products in unusual ways. These users might be rare, but their stories can reveal powerful drivers of innovation and unmet needs.
What Are Edge Cases, Really?
Edge cases are users or situations that don’t fit the common mold. They may include customers with disabilities, people in unique life stages (like caregivers or retirees), extreme users, or even geographic outliers. They can also include users with unusual intents – like those using a product for something outside its intended function.
In market research, especially during JTBD analysis, failure to consider these cases creates what’s known as “confirmation bias” – only validating assumptions with convenient data. This can leave entire user segments misunderstood or ignored.
Why Ignoring Edge Cases Limits Innovation
Removing edge cases from your sample might streamline analysis, but it's a strategic misstep long-term. Here’s why:
- Lost signals of unmet need – Edge case users often push products to their limits. Their workarounds or frustrations can signal potential design enhancements or new offerings entirely.
- Narrow product-market fit – By only focusing on central users, you risk tailoring products too tightly, excluding broader usage opportunities.
- Stunted diversity of insight – You miss out on perspectives that bring depth, empathy, and a more inclusive understanding of your market.
For instance, a mobility app that only researches able-bodied urban commuters could miss out on the needs of suburban users, elderly populations, or those with physical impairments – each of whom represents a unique set of jobs to be done.
Addressing bias in market research is essential not just for equity, but for strategic growth. Including diverse voices leads to better decision-making and more adaptable, widely relevant products.
How to Broaden Your JTBD Research to Include All Voices
To uncover richer consumer insights and fuel more impactful innovation research, your Jobs to Be Done approach needs to deliberately account for a broader range of user segments – including the ones often missing. The solution lies in designing inclusive JTBD research methods right from the start.
Start with Inclusive Sampling
Recruitment is foundational. If you only speak with current customers, you’re missing how non-consumers think and why certain people avoid your brand or category. Instead, diversify your sample by:
- Including non-consumers and lapsed users during recruitment
- Intentionally seeking out fringe or edge case users
- Using demographic and psychographic variation to reflect the full market
This broader approach gives you direct insight into the missing customer voices in product development – the people whose needs haven’t been met yet.
Elevate the “Why” with Qualitative Exploration
While quantitative market research can show you what is happening across user segments, qualitative methods reveal why. Techniques like ethnography, in-depth interviews, and digital diaries allow you to step into the lived experiences of diverse user types. These tools are particularly helpful for uncovering the deeper contexts behind the jobs people are trying to get done.
Frame Non-Consumers as an Opportunity, Not an Obstacle
There’s a tendency to treat non-consumers as irrelevant to core strategy. But in reality, these groups often point the way toward new market opportunities. Asking the right questions – for example, “What’s preventing them from hiring a solution?” – brings fresh perspective to product innovation strategy.
Balance AI Tools with Human Empathy
Tools powered by machine learning can help identify patterns among broad user segments, but don’t overlook the human nuance. Combining AI with skilled moderators and researchers ensures that non-verbal signals, bias triggers, or cultural nuance aren’t lost in translation. Human insight is still key to making sense of what AI finds.
Ultimately, broadening your JTBD research helps you see your target audience more fully – with all their diversity, complexity, and unmet needs. It leads to better business questions and, most importantly, more relevant innovation strategies.
Real-World Benefits of Inclusive JTBD Practices
Embracing inclusive JTBD research isn't just a values-driven choice – it’s a strategic one. By actively including edge cases, non-consumers, and underserved user segments, brands uncover growth opportunities that would otherwise remain invisible. Here’s how widening your research scope translates into real impact.
Product Innovation that Solves Real Frustrations
Companies that listen to underrepresented segments regularly identify solutions that can benefit everyone. A classic example: Curb cuts and closed captions, originally designed for people with disabilities, became universally helpful. The same principle applies in JTBD research. Edge cases often surface unmet needs that, once solved, appeal to mainstream users as well.
Including non-consumers in your research can also reveal the “why nots” – why certain users reject existing options. These insights guide solutions that are not just incrementally better, but fundamentally different.
Expanding Market Reach into Underserved Spaces
Targeting only existing customers narrows your growth. Inclusive research helps teams explore:
- Jobs to be done for underserved markets
- Adaptations for geographic or cultural specificity
- New segments unlocked through adjacencies and stretch use-cases
This is how category leaders identify the “white space” – where unmet needs meet viable solutions. And these spaces are often found on the margins, not the mainstream.
Better Product-Market Fit Across Diverse Audiences
By understanding a fuller range of human needs and use cases, businesses can design products that resonate more widely. Think of packaging that works better for people with arthritis – it benefits new parents, seniors, and even rushed professionals on the go.
Inclusive JTBD research also helps future-proof innovation. As market demographics evolve, solutions grounded in a wide set of needs are more agile and broadly adoptable over time.
Stronger Brand Trust and Loyalty
When users feel seen and heard, it builds connection. Brands that demonstrate understanding across all segments show they’re not just selling – they’re solving problems for real people. That authenticity strengthens brand equity over time.
From better innovation to deeper customer relationships, inclusive Jobs to Be Done practices drive powerful, far-reaching outcomes. And it all starts with asking: Who else should be in the room?
Summary
Jobs to Be Done research is a powerful tool for understanding why consumers make the choices they do. But if you only focus on existing users or the so-called “typical” customer, you limit your potential. This post explored the often-overlooked segments that are missing from many JTBD efforts – including edge cases, visionaries, and non-consumers – and explained why their inclusion is critical.
We looked at commonly missed customer groups, highlighted how non-consumers offer powerful clues to innovation, and explored the risks of excluding edge cases in your market research. We then outlined how to richer, more inclusive studies using practical JTBD research approaches. Finally, we showed that the real-world gains – from broader product market fit to deeper consumer insights – are both measurable and meaningful.
If you’re committed to creating relevant, future-ready products, ensuring your JTBD research reflects all voices can help you get there faster – and smarter.
Summary
Jobs to Be Done research is a powerful tool for understanding why consumers make the choices they do. But if you only focus on existing users or the so-called “typical” customer, you limit your potential. This post explored the often-overlooked segments that are missing from many JTBD efforts – including edge cases, visionaries, and non-consumers – and explained why their inclusion is critical.
We looked at commonly missed customer groups, highlighted how non-consumers offer powerful clues to innovation, and explored the risks of excluding edge cases in your market research. We then outlined how to richer, more inclusive studies using practical JTBD research approaches. Finally, we showed that the real-world gains – from broader product market fit to deeper consumer insights – are both measurable and meaningful.
If you’re committed to creating relevant, future-ready products, ensuring your JTBD research reflects all voices can help you get there faster – and smarter.