In the current scenario, it is important to understand the consumer market development process, recognize the importance of early adopters (people who adopt new products as soon as they are launched) and apply strategies appropriate to the different phases of the product life cycle.
This knowledge allows people involved with products to create solutions that truly solve problems and meet users’ needs, thus ensuring success in the market.
In this article, you will understand the importance of early adopters in validating the mapped problem, and how to apply the Jobs To Be Done method to refine hypotheses about a problem.
What is Customer Development?
Customer Development is a methodology that seeks to develop customer-centered products, reducing risks and increasing the probability of success by favoring alignment between product and market ( product-market fit ).
Developed by Steve Blank , the concept of Customer Development is a central approach to a product’s journey.
The Customer Development process is divided into four main stages:
Customer Discovery : At this first stage, the objective is to identify and understand the problems and needs of customers.
Customer Validation : In the second stage, it is important to validate that the proposed solutions actually solve the problems identified in the discovery phase.
Customer Creation : Next, you need to develop and implement marketing and sales strategies to attract more customers.
Company Building : The last stage involves growing the company based on the lessons learned from the previous phases, as well as structuring the organization for growth.
Customer Development is essential because it helps companies to:
Minimize risks by testing and validating hypotheses before investing deeply in product development;
Focus on the customer, as it ensures that solutions are created based on real problems and genuine feedback;
Adapt and improve the solution through constant feedback cycles;
Accelerate time-to-market by validating assumptions to launch more assertive products more quickly.
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Jobs To Be Done: Refining Hypotheses
Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) is a theory and methodology developed to understand the motivations and needs of the public. The method is a lens that observes how competitors and consumers meet people’s needs.
Rather than focusing solely on the demographic or psychographic characteristics of users, JTBD focuses on the “tasks” that consumers are trying to accomplish when they use a product or service. In other words, the goal is to deprioritize what the public wants to buy and focus on what they want to solve.
The core concept of JTBD is that consumers “hire” products and services to accomplish a specific “job.” This “job” can be any goal, objective, task, or problem that the consumer wants to solve. The idea is to identify the progress that the consumer is trying to make in a specific context.
Therefore, JTDB writing has a consistent way of declaration, combining action verb, action object and context.
Action Verb: What is the consumer trying to do? (e.g., “find,” “buy,” “organize”)
Object of action: What is the specific thing the consumer is trying to accomplish? (e.g., “a place to eat,” “a perfect gift,” “my documents”)
Context: In what situation or under what circumstances is the consumer trying to do this? (e.g. “while traveling”, “for a birthday”, “for an urgent project”)
Consider, for example, writing a JTDB for a task management application in a scenario where productivity needs to be increased:
“Helping users manage their daily tasks to increase productivity in their personal and work lives.”
The action verb of the job is “manage”. The object of the action is “daily tasks” and the context is “To increase personal and professional productivity”.
The method provides a framework for understanding consumers’ underlying motivations, helping companies develop products that truly solve problems and meet market needs. By focusing on the “jobs” – or “tasks” – that users are trying to accomplish, companies can create more innovative, relevant and successful solutions.
It is from this relationship between solution and users that specialist Eduardo Magalhães addresses the process and techniques of consumer market development in the Customer Development class .
Tera students have access to the full class content, which is part of the Introduction to Product Discovery course , focused on developing skills for Digital Product Leadership .
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