Case Study
Christensen Milkshake Study
Clayton Christensen, 2009 article
A fast-food restaurant chain wanted to increase milkshake sales and followed the standard approach — segmenting buyers by demographics and asking what product features they wanted at what price. The resulting improvements had no impact on sales. Clayton Christensen and his team instead studied actual customer behavior directly: interviewing people who'd bought a milkshake about what else they might have bought instead (a bagel, a donut) and why they chose the milkshake.
Result: the real "job" the milkshake was being hired to do was relieving boredom on long, one-handed commutes — not tasting better or costing less. It won specifically because it was thick and slow to consume. Armed with that insight, the team redesigned the product to serve that job better: a thicker shake, a thinner straw (to slow consumption further), and chunky ingredients added for surprise and engagement over the length of the drive. See Jobs to Be Done (Clayton Christensen).
Discussed in
- Episode 30 — 30- The science behind great adverts