What Job Does A Milkshake Do for Consumers?
A few years ago, the late Harvard professor Clay Christensen wrote a great book, Competing Against Luck. He tells a thought-provoking story about McDonald’s and milkshakes to demonstrate the point that consumers hire a milkshake to do a job.
Jobs To Be Done
McDonald’s has world-class marketing teams with oceans of data. They had an issue they were wrestling with a few years ago, trying to understand how they could increase the consumption of milkshakes. They conducted conventional focus groups and interviews and asked consumers of McDonald’s milkshakes how to make them better.
They did improve the milkshake by adding all sorts of flavors, bells, and whistles, only to find that sales stayed flat. They didn’t understand what they had done wrong.
Clay brought this idea of jobs to be done to help them understand milkshakes.
A job arises in the life of a product -a milkshake, for example, that causes consumers to hire a milkshake to get the job done.
Why does a consumer hire a milkshake?
Clay’s colleague observed people for hours buying food at McDonald’s. When did they purchase the milkshakes, eat them in the restaurant, take them with them into their car, or purchase other food?
Like anthropologists, they studied how people used milkshakes to help them understand what job they hired the milkshake to do.
Half of all milkshakes were purchased before 8:30, and it was the only thing they bought; they were alone and drank it in the car on their way to work.
The next day, they asked customers who were walking out of McDonald’s with a milkshake in hand, thinking about the last time they were in the same situation and didn’t “Hire” a milkshake – what did they “hire” for that job?
They all said they had a long boring drive to work. Each person needed something to help them stay engaged in life, and they needed to consume it with one hand on the wheel.
They weren’t starving but needed something to help them through the morning. Sometimes consumers hired a banana to do this job, which wasn’t great at the position.
They also occasionally hired donuts or bagels – each had its headache associated with it. Bagels were challenging because they needed to put cream cheese on the bagel.
But the milkshake takes 23 minutes to drink because of its thickness.
The drink can fill them up, keep them company, and fits in their drink holder. It does the job better than snickers, donuts, bananas, bagels, and coffee.
In the past, McDonald’s was improving milkshakes on “milkshake dimensions,” not for the job it was hired to do.
Sales increased seven-fold when they made it thicker, lasted longer, and easy to grab and go on the counter.
How big is the milkshake market? It is much bigger than the sum of milkshakes sold at fast food because it competes with bananas, donuts, bagels, and so on. The opportunity for milkshakes is more significant than the milkshake market.
The customer rarely buys what the company thinks it is selling.
Understands The Job To Be Done By Your Product
When you understand why your customers hire your product or service, you can improve their experience and better serve their needs.
By carefully defining a market, you can create truly innovative products. Uber had a solution for consumers who needed transportation. Nothing new about that market. But their solution understand that the job to be done was to more easily get cars on demand and to be able to have it prepaid or charged to credit card.
Why do customers hire your product or service, and what job do they need it to do?
You can set up a time to chat with me about your marketing challenges using my calendar. Email me jeffslater@themarketingsage.com Call me. 919 720 0995. The conversation is free, and we can explore if working together makes sense. Watch a short video about working with me.
Photo by Brenda Godinez on Unsplash
