Marketing
Issue No. 50 - December/ /
Problem solving leads to growth
by Dr David Corkindale and Dr David Corkindale
We all know the answer to the classic question, “Why do people buy a power drill?” is: “to meet the need to make holes”.
However, a better answer is: “to help put up a shelf or some other do-it-yourself project”.
This line of thinking can yield unexpected opportunities for improving our existing products and services to meet untapped business opportunities. The secret is to really understand what job your customers or clients want done when they are thinking of buying a product or service in your category.
Segmenting your market by ‘job needing to be done’ can be a useful tool1.
Hiring a drink
The management of a fast food restaurant chain felt the sales of milkshakes could maybe be higher. The marketers found out the profile of the milkshake-buying segment and hired a market research firm to run focus groups to find out how the product could be improved, so as to generate higher sales.
The cross-section of these customers made very specific suggestions about things they thought would make the milkshakes better.
These were broadly implemented but had no impact on sales.
A new line of research was implemented where a researcher observed, from early morning, when a milkshake was bought, by what sort of people, with what other products and where it was consumed.
A surprising result was that 40% of the shakes were bought by single people early in the morning and that’s all they bought.
The researcher interviewed some of these people as they left the restaurant with their shake to find out how and why they consumed them. Most had similar answers: they were in a hurry, in work clothes and
about to undertake a long, boring drive commuting to work. They were not hungry or thirsty but needed something interesting to do that their spare hand was sufficient for. They also needed something that, consumed on the way to work, would enable them to get through to lunchtime.
