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In chapter 13, you’ll learn about Spirit Airlines. Customers have consistently rated it as the worst airline in the United States. Nevertheless, it continues to be the fastest-growing and most profitable airline in America. If customers hate it so much, why do they keep flying it?
Unfortunately, many managers either don’t know or won’t accept this. Instead, they become worried when growth slows. They start making changes to their product in hopes of attracting more customers and increasing revenue; however, the effect is often the opposite. Management ends up making the product worse for existing customers. With some luck, a competitor won’t notice.[9] But luck will eventually run out. Another innovation will enter the market with a product that customers find more valuable (figure 3). Why? Because the entrant’s innovation cuts off all the baggage the incumbent added
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Upgrade your user, not your product. Don’t build better cameras—build better photographers. —Kathy Sierra
Charles Revson, founder of Revlon, perfectly encapsulates a JTBD when he said:[12] In the factory, we make cosmetics. In the drugstore, we sell hope.
Customers don’t want your product or what it does; they want help making themselves better (i.e., they want to transform a life-situation, make progress).
Progress defines value; contrast reveals value.
We must keep in mind that a “need” represents an interaction between the customer, their desire for progress, and whatever product they’ve hired for their JTBD. If one of those parts changes, then customers’ needs will change along with it.
We can learn from this that demographic thinking can be misleading. It was the customers’ situation—not personal characteristics—that determined why they bought.
Demand isn’t spontaneously generated. No one wakes up in the morning and suddenly thinks, Today, I’m going to buy a new car. Some combination of events always comes together to generate that demand. We call those forces push and pull.
