# Jobs-to-be-done positioning for ecommerce: Why the job beats the product > Jennifer Montague explains jobs-to-be-done positioning for ecommerce: start from the job a customer is hiring your product to do, and for multi-category retailers position on experience and differentiation rather than individual products. **Author:** Jennifer Montague **Published:** July 11, 2025 **Tags:** positioning, jobs-to-be-done, go-to-market, ecommerce --- Jennifer Montague, Senior Director of GoToMarket at Verdane, argues that the strongest ecommerce positioning starts from the job a customer is hiring your product to do, not from the product's feature list. The shift is to understand the pain a shopper is trying to resolve, then frame the product as the thing they hire to resolve it. For multi-category retailers, that means positioning on experience and differentiation rather than on any single item, which a shopper could buy anywhere. This builds directly on the broader thinking in [ecommerce personalization](/en/learn/ecommerce-personalization/), and pairs with two companion chapters from the same episode: [AI-driven discovery and the new SEO](/en/blog/ai-driven-discovery-the-new-seo/) and the full [Future-proof your business](/en/blog/2025-07-10-future-proof-your-business-jennifer-montague/) conversation. ## TL;DR **Jennifer Montague reframes ecommerce positioning around jobs-to-be-done: understand your core customer and their pains, then treat your product as something hired to do a job. For retailers with many brands, position on the overarching experience and differentiation, using the three whys (why this, why now, why us) as the starting question.** ## What does customer-centric actually mean? Customer-centric is one of the most overused phrases in commerce, and Jennifer is direct about what it does not mean. It is not the slogan that the customer is always right, and it is not a poster on the wall saying you put customers first. Those are comfortable statements that ask nothing of the business. What she means is deeper. Being customer-centric is about deeply understanding your core customer: how they talk, what they do, what they like and dislike, and where they spend their time. It is about knowing the pains they carry into the shopping experience before they ever reach your site. That distinction matters because everything downstream depends on it. Positioning, product framing, and messaging all flow from an accurate picture of who the customer is and what hurts. Get the understanding wrong and every tactic built on top of it inherits the error. Jennifer treats customer understanding as the foundation, and the jobs-to-be-done framework as the lens you apply once that foundation is in place. ## What is the jobs-to-be-done framework? Jobs-to-be-done is a way of thinking about your product that reframes it around purpose. The idea, popularised by Clayton Christensen, is to think of your product not as a product but as something a customer is hiring to do a job for them. The product is the means; the job is the reason. Jennifer gives a vivid personal example. When she bought a blazer, she did not walk in thinking "I need a blazer." Her actual job was emotional: "I want to look like a boss bitch at work." The blazer was hired to do that job, and wearing it makes her feel that way. The emotional connection is the job, and the garment is simply what she hired to deliver it. The same logic applies far beyond fashion. As she puts it, "I don't want to search for a light baby stroller. I want to make traveling easy and stress-free with my kids. That's the job to be done." The parent is hiring a product to deliver an outcome, and the lightweight stroller is one candidate for that hire. This is a shift in mindset and in how you look at the problem. Once you see the product as a hired solution to a real human job, your positioning, your copy, and your merchandising start to speak to the outcome the customer actually wants. ## How does jobs-to-be-done change positioning? The practical effect of the framework is that it moves your message away from specifications and toward outcomes. A feature list describes what a product is. A job describes what a product does for the person buying it, and that is the thing they are actually shopping for. Consider the difference in framing. A specification-led page leads with weight, dimensions, and materials. A job-led page leads with the outcome: easy, stress-free travel with young children. Both can mention the same features, yet the job-led version connects the feature to the reason the shopper came looking in the first place. The features earn their place by proving the job can be done. That emotional layer is central to Jennifer's argument. The blazer example works because the real motivation was a feeling, confidence at work, rather than a category need. Positioning that names the feeling and the outcome resonates more deeply than positioning that recites attributes, because it meets the shopper where their intent actually lives. The product still has to deliver, but the message starts from the job. ## How do multi-category retailers position? The jobs-to-be-done lens gets harder when a retailer sells thousands of products across many brands and categories. As Jennifer notes, if you are an ecommerce business with a lot of brands and a lot of different types of products, it would be quite difficult to invent a commerce story for every single item. Writing a unique job-based narrative for each SKU does not scale. Her answer is to raise the altitude. Rather than positioning at the level of individual items, look at the more overarching problems that your shoppers share. The job-to-be-done thinking still applies, but it operates on the experience of buying from you rather than on each product in isolation. This is where the framework connects to differentiation. A shopper arriving at a large multi-category retailer can usually find the specific product elsewhere. The reason they choose one store over another lives in the experience: the breadth of selection, the trust, the convenience, and the service around the purchase. Positioning the overarching experience answers the shopper's real question, which is why buy here at all, and that question is what genuinely separates one retailer from the next. ## How does Boozt position on experience? Jennifer points to Boozt as a clear example of experience-led positioning. Boozt is an online department store carrying a wide range of products, and rather than leaning on any individual item, the company positions itself as a Nordic department store online. The identity sits at the level of the whole shopping experience. The differentiators Boozt highlights are about how it feels to shop and to deal with the aftermath of a purchase. Customers can try clothes on at home, and returns are hassle-free. These are experience promises rather than product claims, and they speak directly to the friction shoppers feel when buying clothing online: the uncertainty of fit and the dread of a complicated return. Jennifer frames the strategic question plainly. If she is coming to a Boozt or a Zalando, she may need a product, but she can get that product almost anywhere. So why get it from them? What is the differentiation, and what is the USP that makes the store interesting next to a low-cost player like Temu? The answer Boozt offers is the experience, and the differentiation lives in that experience, which is what shoppers actually choose between. That clarity comes from understanding the customer well enough to know which experience promises matter. ## What are the three whys? When Jennifer helps a business work out its positioning, she starts with a deceptively simple question: why are people shopping from you? In B2B go-to-market work she formalises this as the three whys, and the same structure transfers cleanly to ecommerce. The three whys are: why this, why now, and why us. Why this asks what problem or job the customer is solving by buying from your category at all. Why now asks what makes the moment right, the trigger or context that turns a latent need into an active purchase. Why us asks what makes your store the right place to satisfy that need rather than any competitor who stocks the same goods. Used together, these questions force a positioning conversation that stays anchored to the customer. They map neatly onto the jobs-to-be-done lens, because answering them well requires you to name the job, the moment, and the differentiation in plain terms. For a multi-category retailer, the why-us answer is usually the experience, which loops back to understanding the customer deeply enough to know what they value. The three whys are a practical starting point for that work. ## How do you apply this to your store? The throughline across Jennifer's chapter is sequence. Start by understanding your core customer and the pains they carry. Apply the jobs-to-be-done lens so your product reads as something hired to deliver an outcome rather than a list of attributes. If you sell across many categories, raise the message up to the overarching experience and the differentiation that makes your store worth choosing. And use the three whys to keep the whole exercise honest. For ecommerce teams, the concrete move is to audit your most important category and landing pages against the job, not the spec sheet. Ask what outcome the shopper is hiring this purchase to deliver, what triggered the visit, and why they should complete it with you rather than a cheaper alternative. The retailers that answer those questions clearly give shoppers a reason to choose them that no individual product price can erode. Watch the full Conversations episode with Jennifer Montague: [Future-proof your business](/en/conversations/marketing-masterclass/). --- *This content is from the Hello Retail blog. For the full experience with images and formatting, visit [helloretail.com/en/blog/jobs-to-be-done-ecommerce-positioning](https://helloretail.com/en/blog/jobs-to-be-done-ecommerce-positioning)*