The problem
A clean cooking-fuel provider sold its product on a pay-as-you-go, metered model: a smart meter charged customers only for the fuel they actually burned. In principle it was both cheaper and faster than the traditional alternative most households defaulted to. In practice, about half of customers kept using it alongside the old fuel rather than switching fully.
The reason was trust in the price. The traditional option had one fixed, knowable cost. The metered fuel's cost moved with cooking time, flame strength, equipment wear, even altitude — so a budget-conscious buyer couldn't predict what a meal would cost. Faced with that uncertainty, many chose the option that felt cheaper, even when it wasn't.
The shift: sell certainty, not fuel
Working through Advanced Jobs-To-Be-Done, the product lead ran 44 in-home interviews and surfaced 23 distinct jobs, then validated them quantitatively across more than a thousand respondents. The dominant job was blunt: "let me cook with whatever money I have right now" — prepare a meal on a tight, variable budget without a large upfront outlay and without doing mental math about cost mid-cook.
The metered model technically allowed that, but it forced the customer to carry the uncertainty. The job called for the price to be predictable, not just low.
What changed
The team launched a fixed-price package: a set block of cooking time for a small, flat fee, valid for the day, splittable across meals, and stackable when a household needed more. It removed the calculation entirely and — crucially — made the cost directly comparable to the traditional alternative for the first time. A buyer could now look at one number against another and see that this was the cheaper choice.
The results
Replacing a variable, anxiety-inducing price with a predictable one shifted spending share away from the old fuel:
- Sales per customer rose at least 15% versus a control group after launch.
- Average daily cooking time and active-usage days both increased — a clear sign households were moving more of their cooking onto the product.
- Customers reported more confidence thanks to the fixed, predictable daily cost.
The lesson: sometimes the barrier isn't your price — it's that the customer can't compare your price. Make the cost legible and the better deal sells itself.