Summary:
- Food choices reflect the multiple Jobs consumers are trying to accomplish, balancing affordability, convenience, identity, and values all at once.
- Ethical consumption often stalls because markets make other priorities easier to satisfy than sustainability or social impact.
- Creating more ethical food systems requires building markets that make sustainable choices easier, cheaper, and more accessible.
One of the first pieces I wrote for the Christensen Institute explored Somalia’s famine and the harsh reality that hunger can persist in a world producing enough food. Although famine was the focus of that article, it left me thinking more broadly about food systems, markets, and the many different ways value is created and distributed.
Recently, a very different food story and a related conversation brought those questions back to mind.
The Erewhon organic grocery store local to Southern California sells a $19 strawberry. A single strawberry. For $19. For many people, the obvious reaction is disbelief. Why would anyone pay $19 for something that can be purchased elsewhere for a fraction of the cost?
But Jobs to Be Done suggests a different question: What Job is someone hiring that strawberry to do?
Many conversations about ethical food consumption begin with an assumption: consumers should hire food to help them make morally responsible choices. But that’s only one possible Job among many.
The architecture of a Job
Jobs to Be Done starts from a simple premise: people don’t buy products simply because they want the product itself. A product is “hired” to make progress in a particular circumstance.
A parent doesn’t buy groceries simply to acquire food, they may be trying to feed a family within a limited budget. A commuter doesn’t purchase coffee just for the caffeine boost, they may need the caffeine boost for the workday ahead. A teen may not buy a particular snack because it tastes better, but because it helps them fit in with friends.
The Job in each of these hypotheticals is the progress the person is trying to make. And it’s important to note that within each Job there are three key elements at play:
- The functional force is about practical outcomes. Does the food satisfy hunger? Is it nutritious? Is it affordable? Does it save time?
- The social force concerns how individuals want to be perceived by others. Does this purchase communicate environmental awareness, sophistication, health consciousness, or status?
- The emotional force is about how individuals want to feel. Does the purchase reduce anxiety, create enjoyment, provide comfort or reinforce a sense of identity?
Most consumption will involve all three dimensions at once, which helps explain why behavior around food ethics may appear inconsistent. Also, the same person may hire food for different Jobs at breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Jobs are circumstance dependent. The point is people aren’t simply choosing between ethical and unethical options, they are balancing multiple mulit-dimenstional Jobs at once.
Why ethical consumption often stalls
Much of the ethical consumption movement implicitly assumes that if consumers simply cared more, they’d make better choices. But what if most consumers already care about many of the outcomes ethical food advocates care about? Consumers may already want environmental sustainability, worker welfare, and community well being. The problem then isn’t caring, it’s that these concerns compete with other Jobs.
A parent standing in a grocery aisle may care about sustainable farming practices while simultaneously needing to stretch a food budget through the end of the month. A worker rushing home may value locally sourced ingredients while also needing a meal that can be prepared in ten minutes.
In both hypotheticals, ethical consumption doesn’t fail because these values don’t exist within the consumers, they disappear because other Jobs are more urgent in that circumstance. Jobs theory suggests that consumers are simply making trade-offs among competing forms of progress.
The question then shifts from “Why don’t people make better choices?” to “What Jobs are currently easier to accomplish than ethical consumption?”
Markets make some Jobs easier than others
This is where the conversation moves beyond individual behavior. Most consumers don’t choose from an unlimited set of possibilities. They choose from the options markets make available.
A market determines which Jobs are easy, affordable, and convenient to accomplish. Take refrigeration as an example. Before widespread cold storage existed, consumers couldn’t reliably hire food to remain fresh for extended periods of time, so they went without many options we take for granted today. Refrigeration changed the menu of available choices.
Similarly, modern grocery stores expanded access by bringing a wide range of products into a single location. Improved logistic networks lowered costs and increased availability. Digital platforms make reducing food waste easier by connecting consumers with surplus meals that might otherwise be discarded.
In each case, the innovation didn’t primarily change people’s values, it changed the options available to them.
Markets then shape which Jobs consumers can successfully hire products for progress.
Better markets make better choices
This lens provides a different perspective to think about ethical consumption. Rather than simply asking why consumers aren’t making better choices, we might ask what innovations can make these choices easier to make.
Historically, improvements in food systems have succeeded not because they demanded moral sacrifice from consumers, but because they helped the average person accomplish their Job more effectively.
When ethical options become more affordable, accessible, reliable and convenient, consumers will no longer need to choose between competing Jobs. The same purchase can satisfy multiple forms of progress simultaneously.
Jobs to Be Done reminds us that consumers are always hiring products to accomplish something important in their lives. Ethical consumption is only one Job among many, and often not the most urgent one.
If we want more sustainable, nutritious, and equitable food systems, the challenge is to create markets that make those choices easier, cheaper, and more accessible in the first place.
