Getting the Job Done

Museums often segment audiences by demographics, product characteristics (e.g., membership level), and other criteria such as past behavior (e.g., lapsed members). Yet, there is more going on behind the decision to join that these simplistic data points don’t reveal.

Renowned scholar and founder of modern marketing Theodore Levitt once declared, “People don't want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole!”

The profound concept of thinking about customer goals is at the heart of the Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) theory, and it’s one of the most overlooked aspects of audience development among museum professionals.

The JTBD theory refers to a consumer’s decision to buy something as “hiring” a particular product or service to do a specific job. This unique way of describing consumer behavior shifts the focus of product development away from shallow customer descriptors (like age, income level, or family structure) toward more meaningful motives that influence behavior. In this way, the introduction of a new vocabulary to describe consumer behavior helps marketers home in on the underlying motivations behind purchase decisions.

As Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen explains, “every job people need or want to do has a social, a functional, and an emotional dimension. If marketers understand each of these dimensions, then they can design a product that's precisely targeted to the job.”

What if we were to design membership in a way that helps people get a specific job done such as learning something new, being a good parent, or emotionally recharging? How might membership look differently if we approached the member experience from the perspective of JTBD?