Data can tell us a lot – what customers buy, how often, at what price point, and even how they interact with websites or marketing campaigns. But despite these valuable inputs, teams are often caught off guard when customer actions don’t align with what the data predicted. This disconnect raises a fundamental question: What’s missing from our understanding of customer behavior?

Let’s say a company launches a new healthy snack, backed by survey responses suggesting strong demand for better-for-you options. The marketing message emphasizes “low sugar” and “natural ingredients” – yet sales are sluggish. What happened? It’s a classic case of customer behavior not matching the data.

This gap often arises because surface-level data points – like purchase frequency, satisfaction scores, or even stated preferences – can miss deeper motivations. People might say they want something, but when facing real-world trade-offs or emotional drivers, they behave differently. That’s what we call a behavioral contradiction.

Why Common Data Sources Sometimes Miss the Mark

Most traditional research tools emphasize what customers do or say, rather than why they do it. This can lead to misleading conclusions, especially in areas like:

• Product features: Customers might rate a feature highly in a survey but never actually use it.
• Price sensitivity: People say price matters most, but a more expensive option outsells the cheaper one.
• Brand values: Shoppers claim to care deeply about sustainability yet choose the product with quickest shipping.

These contradictions can cause confusion and misinvestment. Worse, they erode trust in research, even when the tools were applied correctly. Addressing this challenge starts with acknowledging that customer decision making is more layered than it appears on the surface.

The Role of Context and Emotion

Much of the unexpected behavior stems from human complexity – context, emotion, social influence, and timing often override logic. A customer may reach for comfort food during a stressful week despite their usual health-conscious habits. Others may skip over the "top-rated" product if it doesn't feel right in the moment.

This doesn’t mean data is wrong; it means it’s incomplete. To fully understand why customers act differently than expected, researchers must dig deeper into the moments and motivations behind the behavior – the job they’re hiring the product to do. And this is where Jobs To Be Done comes in.

The Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) framework is a practical and insightful way to understand why customers act unexpectedly. It shifts the focus from demographics or preferences to what people are actually trying to accomplish in their lives – what “job” they’re hiring a product or service to do. When we identify those jobs, we can better explain and even anticipate behavior that seems irrational at first glance.

What Is Jobs To Be Done?

At its core, JTBD is based on one key idea: people don’t buy products, they hire them to solve a problem or make progress. That “job” might be functional, like saving time, or emotional, like feeling confident in a social setting. A product succeeds when it helps the customer accomplish that goal better than their current alternatives – and fails when it doesn’t.

So, when a customer “acts irrationally,” it might just be that we misunderstood the job they were trying to get done.

Examples of JTBD in Action

Consider these simple but meaningful cases of JTBD at work:

• A parent chooses a sugary cereal over the healthier one. Why? Because the job isn’t “feed my child a nutritious breakfast” – it’s “get my kid out the door on time without a fight.”
• A commuter chooses an expensive bottled smoothie, not for taste or price, but because it signals health and ambition during a rushed morning.
• Shoppers skip a feature-rich app because it looks intimidating, even if it solves the core need. The job includes "feeling in control," not just completing a task.

These examples show how JTBD reveals the real drivers behind customer decisions – often practical, sometimes emotional, and not always what the data implies.

How JTBD Diagnoses Unexpected Choices

Using JTBD, researchers and product teams can uncover the hidden logic in seemingly irrational behavior. The framework helps explain:

• Conflicting priorities (e.g. health vs. convenience)
• Emotional needs not captured in surveys (e.g. family approval, identity, stress management)
• Why innovative products don’t gain traction (they solve the wrong job)

By interviewing customers with a JTBD lens – exploring their circumstances, motivations, and the outcomes they seek – you start to identify patterns. These insights can reshape messaging, reposition products, and even improve how teams interpret consumer data.

Why This Matters for Business Leaders

For decision-makers across functions, understanding customer behavior through this lens provides a more accurate map for strategy. When a product underperforms, or a marketing message falls flat, the JTBD framework helps diagnose behavioral contradictions and adjust your approach – not just react. It adds clarity to confusion, particularly when data alone doesn’t tell the full story.

In short, JTBD translates “odd” customer behavior into understandable actions tied to unmet needs. And that’s powerful insight for anyone trying to serve customers better.

Customer decisions don’t always follow logic – at least not the kind we expect. Even after analyzing consumer behavior data and running surveys, businesses often find themselves asking: Why did our customers choose that?

These moments of confusion aren’t random. They usually point to hidden motivations. The Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) framework is a helpful lens, offering clarity by shifting the focus from the product to the problem the customer is trying to solve.

Real-World Examples of Behavioral Contradictions

Here are a few situations where customer behavior seemed inconsistent – until the underlying job was uncovered:

• Choosing a pricier but bulkier product: A household opts for a large slow cooker instead of a compact one, even though storage space is limited. Why? They’re not just cooking – they’re making weeknight dinners easier by meal prepping on Sundays. The “job” is peace of mind during busy weekdays.
• Using a product “wrong”: A cleaning product meant for countertops is mostly used on shoes. While surprising to brands, the job customers are hiring it for is restoring white surfaces, no matter the object.
• Skipping features you assumed were essential: A fitness app adds social sharing options, but users ignore them. Turns out, they’re using the app for silent accountability – they want personal progress, not community attention.

Why These Decisions Defy Traditional Data

Traditional market research tools like focus groups or basic surveys are valuable but may skim the surface. They often measure what people are doing and liking. But they don’t always explain why people make the decisions they do – especially when those decisions clash with stated preferences.

Real insight comes from understanding the customer’s context and desired progress. By identifying what people are truly trying to accomplish – functional, emotional, or social “jobs” – you can diagnose mismatches between their needs and how your product is positioned.

This is where the JTBD framework becomes essential: it helps untangle inconsistencies in consumer behavior by reframing decisions as purposeful actions driven by progress, not just preference.

At first glance, unexpected customer choices can seem irrational. But from the perspective of Jobs To Be Done, those choices are often very logical – just for reasons not immediately visible through traditional customer data.

JTBD works by identifying the deeper motivations behind a purchase, behavior, or brand interaction. Instead of assuming customers buy “because they like it,” this framework asks: What change are they trying to create in their lives?

Job Statements: The Foundation of JTBD

In JTBD, jobs are typically captured through “job statements,” such as:

“When I __________, I want to __________, so I can __________.”

For example: “When I travel for work frequently, I want a hotel that feels like home, so I can stay refreshed and productive.”

This goes beyond demographics or general desires. It reframes how to study and interpret customer motivation by surfacing context, goals, and success criteria. This structure is invaluable for diagnosing customer behavior when it seems to diverge from expected patterns.

Tools and Methods for Applying JTBD in Research

To surface hidden needs, market research teams can use a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods informed by the JTBD framework, such as:

• In-depth interviews: These explore real scenarios and decisions, often revealing emotional or practical drivers that would never show up in survey checkboxes.
• Ethnographic research: Observing customers in their environments uncovers context-specific jobs that are hard to articulate but very real.
• Switch interviews: A JTBD-specific tool that investigates what pushed a person to switch from one product or service to another.

By using these techniques with a JTBD lens, researchers gain a more complete picture of customer decision making. It brings clarity to behavioral contradictions – revealing why customers might choose an imperfect product, ignore new features, or remain loyal to legacy solutions despite better alternatives.

In short, understanding irrational customer choices becomes far more approachable when we stop asking only “what” and “who” – and start asking, “What job are they hiring this for?”

No matter how well-researched your product or brand may be, customer behavior will always include some surprises. When unexpected decisions happen repeatedly, it's a signal that a deeper layer of customer understanding is missing – one that can often be addressed with the JTBD approach.

Step Back and Reframe the Problem

If customers are consistently acting in ways that don’t align with what your data predicts, start by reframing the situation. Ask yourself:

• Are we measuring the right behaviors? Purchases and app usage are only part of the picture. What emotions or trade-offs are happening behind the scenes?
• Are we listening for the real struggle? Often, interviews and surveys catch surface-level insights. JTBD encourages conversations about context, coping strategies, and workaround behaviors that reveal the real jobs customers are trying to get done.

Start Exploring Alternative Jobs

Unexpected customer decisions often point to alternative or competing jobs that aren’t currently being served well. For instance:

- A frozen meal brand might realize it's not just competing with other dinners – it's competing with the job of “providing healthy options when parents don't have time to cook.”

- A smartphone app may think it’s helping users “learn a language,” but the real job might be “feeling smart and productive during downtime.”

These insights open up new ways to innovate, reposition, or even resegment your audience based on jobs rather than demographics alone.

Make JTBD Part of an Ongoing Research Toolkit

The most customer-attuned businesses aren’t just reactive – they embed frameworks like JTBD into ongoing customer research. That might mean layering JTBD interviews into regular feedback loops or using insights teams to guide product decisions from early-stage discovery through launch and refinement.

JTBD shouldn’t replace other market research tools. Instead, it enhances them – delivering richer context, uncovering hidden drivers, and improving product-market fit when decisions defy expectations.

At SIVO, we help teams use customer behavior shifts as signposts. When surprises happen, rather than seeing them as setbacks, we treat them as opportunities: a chance to ask smarter questions and meet needs that even customers don’t always articulate clearly.