Company · Food & Drink

Unilever

A consumer goods giant that held most of the US margarine market.

unilever.com1 source1 tips

Where Unilever comes up1 book

At a glanceUnilever led margarine while butter overtook the whole category

PeakAbout 70% of US margarineAround 21 brands, split by fat percentage
Mid-2000sButter overtakes margarineOlive oil also growing fast
End of 2014Spread spin-off announcedUnilever exits its margarine-led spreads business

From Jobs-to-be-done book on Unilever

Unilever differentiated margarine by fat percentage, not by the job customers hired it for. It held about 70 percent of US margarine with around twenty-one brands that differed mainly on fat percentage, and it ignored the job analysis. Butter overtook margarine by the mid-2000s, and Unilever announced a spread spin-off at the end of 2014.
Olive oil also grew fast during the period, which shows buyers were choosing across categories rather than within margarine.
BBooks
Redraw your competitor list around the job, across categories, including doing nothing. List everything a customer could hire for the job, doing nothing included, and write a résumé of each option's strengths and weaknesses. Unilever's share of margarine hid the fact that butter and olive oil were the real rivals.
Netflix's CEO named video games and wine as rivals, a similar cross-category view. The book's line: "No customer walks into the store saying, "I need to buy something in the yellow fats category.""
BBooks