Why a product hierarchy is critical to defining a value prop

Quoted on this wiki

Every place a page here uses this source, in the order the words come in it.

1. What is a product hierarchy? “It starts at the very top, with the fundamental needs that customers may be looking to serve when leveraging your product or interacting with your company more holistically.” This can simply be referred to as a "job to be done". And it goes down all the way to the specific SKUs and items that you put on the shelf for customers.

   In Value proposition hierarchy

2. In short, a product hierarchy is a framework that helps you to organize the different components of your products to market. It starts at the very top, with the fundamental needs that customers may be looking to serve when leveraging your product or interacting with your company more holistically. “This can simply be referred to as a "job to be done". And it goes down all the way to the specific SKUs and items that you put on the shelf for customers.” This is organized as an inverted pyramid, with the product need being the broadest category. And so I've used a company that we should all be fairly familiar with, McDonald's, just to illustrate this.

   In Value proposition hierarchy

3. This can simply be referred to as a "job to be done". And it goes down all the way to the specific SKUs and items that you put on the shelf for customers. “This is organized as an inverted pyramid, with the product need being the broadest category.” Product need

   In Value proposition hierarchy

4. Product family & product class “This is really focused on the functional use case.” Product line & Product type

   In Value proposition hierarchy