MIT SLOAN: FINDING THE RIGHT JOB FOR YOUR PRODUCT

This article has 3 purposes: 1. To describe the benefits executives can reap when they segment their markets by jobs. 2. To describe the methods that those involved in marketing and new product development can use to identify the job-based structure of a market. 3. To show how the details of business plan become coherent when innovators understand the job to be done

KEY WORDS
Postioning- A marketing strategy that aims to make a brand occupy a distinct position, relative to competing brands, in the mind of the customer. Companies apply this strategy either by emphasizing the distinguishing features of their brand (what it is, what it does and how, etc.) or they may try to create a suitable image (inexpensive or premium, utilitarian or luxurious, entrylevel or high-end, etc.) through advertising. Once a brand is positioned, it is very difficult to reposition it without destroying its credibility. Also called product positioning.

New product development- Process of developing a new product or service for the market. This type of development is considered the preliminary step in product or service development and involves a number of steps that must be completed before the product can be introduced to the market. New product development may be done to develop an item to compete with a particular product/service or may be done to improve an already established product. New product development is essential to any business that must keep up with market trends and changes.

Marketing mix- A mixture of several ideas and plans followed by a marketing representative to promote a particular product or brand is called marketing mix. Several concepts and ideas combined together to formulate final strategies helpful in making a brand popular amongst the masses form marketing mix. Elements of marketing mix are: a) Product b) Place c) Promotion d) Price

Differentiation- Result of efforts to make a product or brand stand out as a provider of unique value to customers in comparison with its competitors.

Segmentation- The process of defining and subdividing a large homogenous market into clearly identifiable segments having similar needs, wants, or demand characteristics. Its objective is to design a marketing mix that precisely matches the expectations of customers in the targeted segment.

LEARNINGS
No company has designed till now that is optimised to do the mobile office job that these millions of people need to do it. TATA/Maruti can take this into consideration and accordingly develop a product as oer the customers needs. Companies always find that their customers are using their products for different jobs than the company had intended. Often they learn that the product does one of these quite well, but they see customers force-fitting it for other jobs, putting up with their ineffeciences because its their only option. Such situations are opportunities to modify the product and its marketing mix so that it can compete more effectively and gain share against job candidates in other product categories. Car companies specially like TATA/Maruti can design their products accordingly and put it up for other jobs effectively as well. HillRom Co, a medical equipped company grew its share of the hospital bed market by figuring out how ti understand what drove its customers profitablity even more astutely than the customers did.

LIMITATIONS
When once unique features of an augmented product become commonly expected, companies are saddled with the costs of providing those features but cannot sustain premium pricing for offering them . The root reason for this is pervasive attack of positioning products in categories that are dfined by properties of products so that better is achieved by copying features and stretching personality.( If a product is expected to become a premium priced product in d near future then there is no point making a product for a particular segment because as the price increases the target customers will also change)