by Ben Hayden-Smith, Bond University Teaching Fellow
With Christmas just around the corner, it’s possibly more important than ever to grasp the reality that nothing in consumerism stays still for long.
Indeed, as the late American business theorist and godfather of disruptive innovation Clayton Christensen famously said, “Success doesn't come from understanding the customer, it comes from a deep understanding of the job the customer is trying to get done.”
On paper, Christensen’s disruptive innovation is something that creates a new market and value network or enters at the bottom of an existing market and eventually displaces established market-leading firms, products, and alliances.
In reality it is customer focused businesses knowing what makes their customers tick so they can build their products to suit and keep the cash registers ticking over.
It's the opposite of far too many product-focused businesses that struggle in the medium to long term because markets change, fads come along or simply because what they are selling just isn’t the flavour of the month anymore.
True innovation and transformative success most often start with understanding the unspoken needs, routines, and desires of customers, and it’s a simple thing to get right, particularly if people rely on their own resourcefulness and business smarts to get their ideas from the drawing board and into the hands of consumers.
They do it by listening to their consumer base, not assuming a single thing and developing and delivering a product that those people want.
That’s right. Don’t tell customers what they want. Ask them. Observe them. See what it is they want to get done.
I always like the story of McDonalds in the US embarking on a quest to boost sales of their low cost, high profit margin Thick Shakes by bringing in new and more efficient machines.
When sales didn’t become proportionately any bigger in came Christensen who went to several stores to observe customers.
He discovered that half the daily Thick Shakes sold were before 8:30am, it was men that overwhelmingly bought them, and they were usually the only item the customers purchased after they’d stepped in the store.
They were also a uniquely mobile product with plenty of them consumed in cars on the daily commute.
Armed with that simple knowledge the marketing became laser focused on these people and their habits and sales quickly surged a jaw-dropping 700 percent.
So, to anyone wanting to sell anything late this Christmas season; look, listen, and understand what the customer is about because if you don’t do your homework, your product development and rollout is always going to be little more than a risky assumption.
And that’s something no one wants to buy.