Buyer Utility Map

Blue Ocean Strategy Glossary - Buyer Utility Map

Buyer Utility Map is a tool that helps managers test whether their business or product/service offers a leap in value to buyers. It also helps managers test whether their business or product/service unwittingly blocks buyer utility across the totality of the buyer's experience. A buyers' experience can be broadly broken into a cycle of six stages: Purchase, Delivery, Use, Supplements, Maintenance, and Disposal. At each stage, a company can typically use six levers to unlock exceptional buyer utility: Customer Productivity, Simplicity, Convenience, Risk, Fun & Image, and Environmental Friendliness. The buyer utility map is a two-dimensional matrix that displays the six stages of the buyer experience cycle on one dimension, and the six utility levers on the other.

By applying the buyer utility map, managers: 1) gain initial insights into the unquestioned assumptions that their industry is based on that detract from value and can be reversed; 2) can test the exceptional utility of their offering by checking whether their business or product/service removes the biggest blocks to utility across the experience cycle; 3) can uncover what assumptions increase costs without significantly raising buyer utility.

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