CH03-EX02. The River Radar Case: Redefining the Market by Customer Problem, Not Product

• Related Chapter: CH03 (Defining the Customer, the Buyer, and the Problem)
• Related MN: MN03 Customer, Buyer, and Problem
• Related KM: KM022-problem-based-market-redefinition.md

What This Case Illustrates

A case showing how competitors and market scope change when you redefine the market by the job the customer is trying to get done (the problem), rather than by product category.

If you center the product name “river radar equipment,” the market looks narrowly like the competitors who make similar measurement devices. But if you center the customer’s actual job — “national streamflow measurement and water resource management” — the set of competitors and the scope of the market itself change. This shows that the market’s real boundary can become sharper when you use the customer’s problem, rather than the product, as the basis.

Source: Price Is Strategy, Part 2, “Redefining the Market: Define by the Customer’s Problem, Not the Product,” pp. 71-73 (quoted in KM022).