Jobs-to-Be-Done (JTBD) Growth Strategy Matrix

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Competing in this cutthroat environment demands unique strategies.

After identifying a customer group, organizations have to decide which of them they should target and how.  There is a need to ascertain the full range of customer jobs that have to be completed (including both their underserved and over-served needs).

Leadership should now consider and select the approach needed to win in a market.  It’s time to decide if there is a need to add a new feature to an existing product, develop a less expensive version of a product, or take an alternative path altogether.

The Jobs-To-Be-Done (JTBD) Growth Strategy Matrix outlines unique market strategies to target the right customers and fulfill its needs.  The matrix assists in narrowing down the best possible strategies for a particular situation.  The basic premise is that the product should complete a customer’s job quicker, better, and more affordably than the rivals.

JTBD Growth Strategy Framework plots the possibilities of product or service offerings to get customers’ jobs done better, worse, cheaply, or expensively on a 2×2 matrix.  It allows organizations to place different segments of customers to be targeted for a value proposition in appropriate quadrants.  The Y axis of the matrix plots the organization’s ability to get the job done effectively or inferiorly compared to its competitors. The X axis, on the other hand, plots its ability to offer expensive or cheap products compared to its rivals.

• The left upper quadrant is for customers who have underserved needs. To win these customers, organizations should offer products that get the job done better and, in return, charge more than rival products.
• The lower left quadrant holds customers with limited options. Companies can charge more for their offerings to this group even if they do not offer any advantage over rival products.
• The right upper quadrant hosts any type of customer, either with underserved or overserved needs. A better-performing but less expensive offering will win such customers.
• The right lower quadrant encompasses non-customers or customers with over-served needs—organizations should price their products less to win this customer segment.

In order to satisfy the distinct needs of the customers in the 4 quadrants of the JTBD Growth Strategy Matrix, organizations can employ 5 unique strategies depending on what’s best for a particular scenario:

1. Differentiated Strategy
2. Dominant Strategy
3. Disruptive Strategy
4. Discrete Strategy
5. Sustaining Strategy

Let’s dive deeper into the first 3 strategies for now.

Differentiated Strategy

A Differentiated Strategy is used by many of the most successful and rapidly expanding businesses in the world, as it generates excessively high profits if executed well.  This approach is adopted to serve underserved consumer groups with a new product or service that performs a customer’s job better yet costs significantly more.

The strategy helps an organization join a market at the upper end, take a sizable chunk of the profits, and then penetrate the market to increase market share. It can gradually reduce the price of its older products through operational Innovation and production cost reduction while adding newer and better products.

Dominant Strategy

Dominant Strategy is adopted by those businesses that focus on every customer in a market with a new product or service that does the job noticeably better and cheaper.  Most existing players cannot guard themselves against this strategy, as it drastically reduces their margins and often requires investing in a new product platform, competencies, resources, and talent.

Research indicates that businesses can succeed with a Dominant Strategy if they offer a value proposition that does the job at least 20% better and 20% cheaper than rivals’ offerings.

Disruptive Strategy

Disruptive Strategy is employed by organizations to target a group of overserved customers or non-consumers with a new value proposition that enables them to complete a job more affordably but less effectively than competing offerings.

Interested in learning more about the other Product Strategies? You can download an editable PowerPoint presentation on JTBD Growth Strategy Matrix here on the Flevy documents marketplace.

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