Marketing Reading: Customer Centricity

By: Rohit Deshpande

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Synopsis: Without customers, businesses could not succeed. The term "Customer Centric" has therefore become synonymous with proactive business strategy worldwide. Primarily due to advances in technology, we are experiencing a fundamental shift in marketing - from a previous focus on companies to a spotlight on consumers - giving customers a much stronger voice in both the Business-to-Business (B2B) and Business-to-Consumer (B2C) sectors. Customer centricity fits three ways into an organization: as part of a knowledge management system (understanding the customer), as part of the development of strategic competence as a learning organization (building a customer-centric culture), and as a foundation for corporate strategy development and execution (serving the customer). This reading is organized into three main sections covering these topics and uses many examples from diverse industries to illustrate successes in each area. In addition, a Supplemental Reading examines the dynamic between customer centricity and innovation and also provides a contrarian view to the topic.