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Customer Orientation

The Concept and Relevance of Customer Orientation

Customer orientation Graphics courtesy of Marketing-91Opens in new window

Customer orientation is one of the most important factors of success needed to survive in an environmentOpens in new window characterized by enormous competition.

Customer orientation entails focusing the sum of all company thoughts and actions on the customer’s needs, wishes, and problems.

Customer-oriented companies manage to arrive relatively quickly in a situation where they can rapidly and effectively react to new market opportunities, so that they can, via customer-focused concepts, adjust to newly-developed customer wants.

Although customer orientation has been supported for years now, and is the guiding principle of many companies, just as before the offered product is more often than not the center of attention.

The achieving of maximum customer orientation is based on suitable structures, and employees, all acting and thinking with the point of view of the customer in mind.

The goal of customer orientation is always customer satisfactionOpens in new window. This is because satisfied customers are more likely to choose the product again, to passively or actively recommend it, and to react with less price sensitivity.

They might even become loyal customersOpens in new window, who no longer take competing offers into consideration. This simplifies their decision, in the sense that their choice of the product or serviceOpens in new window has become a matter of habit (Simon & Homburg, 1998, p. 20).

According to the American management strategists, Haines and McCoy, a company that wants to create a sound basis for customer-oriented action needs to fulfill the following ten demands. These criteria can be seen as a catalog of measures for companies, who are still far from optimal customer orientation (Haines & McCoy, 1995, S. 27 – 28).

The Ten Requirements for a Customer-Oriented Company
  1. Cultivate a close contact with your customer. This goes especially for employees with management roles (This requirement includes: seeing, touching, feeling, i.e., meeting at regular intervals — outside of the business context — to have face-to-face talks with the customer).
  2. Strive to be in a position of trust, in relation to the customer needs, expectations and wishes. It should be the goal of your whole organization to exceed the expectations of your customer.
  3. Check the satisfaction of your customer with your products and services on a regular basis. A constant flow of information between you and your customer is very important — be it positive, neutral, or negative. Do not block it out, be open to it!
  4. Concentrate on all areas of performance, with which you can add value for the custojmer. For example quality and service, eco-friendliness, economy of action, acceptance of customer wishes and needs, fast delivery and performance, good security, etc.
  5. Consider your customer in your decision making, in theme groups, meetings, planning and even in internal business considerations. Don’t block them out.
  6. Require from every person in your organization that they meet and serve your customers personally at least one or more days a year; There is no substitute for staying with the pulse of your customers.

    . . . to be continued
Continuation. The Ten Requirements for a Customer-Oriented Company
  1. Adapt to, and if necessary structure your business process around, the needs and perceptions of your customers. Go from the top to the bottom, and adapt all functional areas of your organization accordingly.
  2. Structure your organization according to the market. Orient your organization such that it fits your market (i.e., I customer – I supplier).
  3. Develop a customer recovery strategy (CRS) and use it. Reward CRS behavior especially within function spanning teams with customer contact. Both Marriott and Nordstrom take that old saying very seriously, “When a customer is satisfied, he tells three other people, but when he isn’t satisfied, he tells his story to eleven other people”. Both organizations are very quick to react to every complaint.
  4. You should only hire and encourage customer friendly employees. Although from a healthy, human point of view, this appears to be self evident, the truth is that most organizations are so concerned with their own affairs, that they lose track of their very reason for being — the customer.

    Figure X-1: Ten Criteria for a Customer-Oriented Company (Haines & McCoy, 1995, pp. 27 – 28)
See Also:
  1. Anderson, E.W., Fornell, C., and Lehmann, D.R. (1994): Customer Satisfaction, Market Share, and Profitability: Findings from Sweden, Journal of Marketing, 58 (3), 53 – 66.
  2. Atuahene-Gima, K. (1996): Market Orientation and Innovation, Journal of Business Research, 35 (2), 93 – 103.
  3. Deshpande, R., Farley, J.U., and Webster, F.E. (1993): Corporate Culture Customer Orientation, and Innovativeness in Japanese Firms: Quadrad Analysis, Journal of Marketing, 57 (1), 23 – 37.
  4. Homburg, C., Wieseke, J., and Bornemann, T. (2009): Implementing the Marketing Concept at the Employee-Customer Interface: The Role of Customer Need Knowledge, Journal of Marketing, 73 (4), 64 – 81.
  5. Hult, G.T.M., Ketchen, D.J., and Slater, S.F. (2005): Market Orientation and Performance: An Integration of Disparate Approaches, Strategic Management Journal, 26 (12), 1173 – 1181.
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