Buyer Utility Map

The Buyer Utility Map plots six stages of the buyer experience cycle (purchase, delivery, use, supplements, maintenance, disposal) against six utility levers (productivity, simplicity, convenience, risk, fun/image, environmental). It locates friction and innovation opportunities.

Competitive factors miss where in the journey utility breaks. This map finds leap points for Blue Ocean "create" moves.

After personas/journey draft, before ERRC create rows. Especially useful when product quality is parity but experience is not.

1. Define buyer and cycle stages relevant to your category.
2. Score utility blocks high/low or mark pain.
3. Identify biggest blocks — candidate create/raise actions.
4. Cross-check with journey map pains.
5. Feed winners to ERRC and prototype bets.

• Focused on one primary buyer.
• Multiple pain blocks identified, not all green.
• Actions tied to specific cells.

• Marking all cells positive — no insight.
• Wrong buyer lens (user vs economic buyer).
• Ignoring maintenance/support stages in B2B SaaS.

Northvale Systems high pain at use × risk for suppliers fearing disqualification; created transparent rejection reasons and resubmit path.

Acme Analytics found high pain in use × risk (controllers fear audit errors) and delivery × simplicity (setup too technical). Created guided reconciliation wizard and auditor export pack.

Riverstone Legal spotted purchase × risk (fear of open-ended fees) and use × convenience (lawyers slow on Slack). Created fixed retainer tiers and Slack-first advisory workflow.

Clearwater Initiative pain at maintenance × simplicity — committees forget test day; created SMS reminder and one-tap photo upload.

/strategy produces buyer-utility-map with cell IDs BUM-01. Pairs with customer journey and Blue Ocean canvas.