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Shoppers are on a mission to get a Job* done. Shopping is a process of finding, buying, and using products to address life’s situations. Consumers will buy a new product when they get a sense of its Job Performance -- how it helps with a particular Job. Innovations need to find better ways to do Consumer Jobs.
Shopping is a process of imagination. Imagining how to achieve better Job Performance is the energy that fuels shopper behavior and market demand. The shopper builds and rebuilds imaginary how-will-this-work scenarios involving new products (or old products used in new ways) – but not all the time, and some consumers are better Job innovators than others. Understanding how shoppers innovate (or are blocked from innovating when they don’t find what they are looking for) provides a whole new basis for developing new products – Consumer Job Performance. Innovations need to spark the imagination of shoppers with new ideas for doing consumer Jobs.
Value has two faces. Value lives both in the real world of the product (Supply-side Value) and the virtual world of the shopper’s imagination (Demand-side Value). Demand-side Value feeds on the ideas, situations, and experiences that the consumer can see in her mind’s eye. From the consumer’s viewpoint, a new product is first and foremost a "Job Innovation Platform" for bringing new ideas to life. Ne3w products need to be designed to leverage the Demand-side Value hidden in consumer Jobs.
New products raise questions. And shopping is the process that consumers use to answer them. Think of shopping as a consumer tool for finding and making sense of new products, a tool for unlocking the value hidden in something new. New products fail when value-creating questions go unresolved. Product developers need to optimize a new product’s Demand-side Value by working backwards from the concept of an "interactive shopper interface" (packaging, in-store merchandising, Internet) designed to help the shopper sell herself by answering her questions about what the product’s Job Performance will be like.
A Job is a system for finding, buying, and using category choices to address real life situations. Consumer Jobs shape and re-shape life. Consumer Jobs fuel market demand.
