“Who is the consumer? What is the job to be done?”

“Deep consumer understanding is at the heart of the strategy discussion.. . To be effective, strategy must be rooted in a desire to meet user needs in a way that creates value for both the company and the consumer. . .

Who is the consumer? What is the job to be done? Why do consumers choose what they do, relative to the job to be done? Bounty had tremendous awareness and brand equity in the North American marketplace. ‘It had by far the best equity in its category— one of the strongest brand equities in the company,’ says Pierce. ‘If you asked, virtually 100 percent of people would say Bounty is a great brand and a really good product. Then some would go off and buy something else. What’s wrong with this picture?’ Pierce and his team set out to truly understand consumer needs, habits, and practices as they relate to paper towels. In watching and talking to consumers, they found that there were three distinct types of paper towel users. The first group cared about both strength and absorbency. For this group, Bounty was a perfect fit—a great combination of the two attributes they cared most about. The team found that among these consumers, Bounty was already the clear winner. Here, ‘Bounty didn’t have a forty share,’ Pierce says. ‘It had an eighty share.’ But many consumers didn’t fit into the strength-and-absorbency category; those consumers fell squarely into the remaining two segments. The second segment consisted of consumers who wanted a paper towel with a cloth-like feel. Rather, this group of customers cared about how soft the paper towel felt in their hand. The final segment had price as their top priority, though not as their sole concern, says Pierce: ‘The need of those consumers was also on strength.’”