Marketing#Customer orientation
Term customer orientation be understood in business administration, the shares of a process orientation and marketing orientation, by means of which the dependence of the company is provided by the customer at the heart of business decisions. Lack of customer orientation may reduce revenues and earnings. The reasons for lack of customer orientation are common in the corporate culture, the structure and little effective or non-transparent processes of the company. The customer is king is considered here as a paradigm of the commercial mindset. The ability of meeting customer expectations is assessed as a key competitive advantage and a seemingly endless variety of management teaching and marketing theories deal in some cases commercially with its implementation. Customer orientation means colloquially and look in everyday business can be helped as a customer, and not what are the reasons that his wishes can not be fulfilled. This customer orientation can be understood as organizational size in terms of customer orientation of corporate culture and the strategic decisions or as individual size in terms of customer orientation of individuals.
Customer orientation as organizational size
Future trend of process orientation
Process orientation is a critical success factor for consistently strong customer focus. This applies to all business units that are connected to an internal customer-supplier relationship. According to a study by the University of Trier (June 2003) measure 72.7 percent of the surveyed companies of process orientation, for example, in sales to a growing importance. This applies both to compensate for inefficiencies: Business processes must be coordinated reinforced each other in the company to cope with the increasing complexity of the market and customers successful. Secondly, it will be necessary to incorporate more process - thinking and action in the sales area to define instead of a " black-box distribution " transparent approaches and behaviors that are better adapted to future changes in demand. 85.4 percent of the companies surveyed measure a faster and more efficient operation of customers' wishes and requirements in a growing importance. Here, structures and processes must be consistent with the structure has to be guided by the processes.
Future trends Virtual Customer Integration
More and more companies are looking for methods and tools to integrate customer already at an early stage in the innovation process. This is especially true the most innovative customers as so-called " lead users " ( von Hippel, 1986) to integrate and to jointly develop innovative product and service concepts. The company benefits in this case not only the problem but also on the solution knowledge of lead users.
More and more companies operate in the meantime Web portals to " virtual customer integration". For example, customers can in virtual communities ideas on a provided by the company and operated web portal upload innovation ideas from the product and service environment and for discussion; other people can then pick up the set ideas, comment and evolve ( Bretschneider, 2012). Examples of ideas communities are the " IdeaStorm " community of DELL or the " MyStarbucks " community of Starbucks. The customer can specify roles ( 1) ideas ( 2) Ideenauswähler, (3) co-developer and even " Marketing " take ( Rohrbeck, Steinhoff, Perder, 2010).
Customer expectations of tomorrow
The belief that increasing customer demands will be one of the greatest challenges in the future scenario of sales in 2010, are 51.5 percent of respondents. This is primarily because it is also eligible for 61.1 percent of the company to a declining customer loyalty, resulting from shorter product life cycles, increasing transparency and increasingly difficult personal ties. All factors together produce more "moments of truth" in a shorter time and therefore potential change situations that lower the hurdle to change the manufacturer or the brand. Customer dissatisfaction in the B2B sector is thus in future have far more serious consequences than in the past, so it will depend on the ability of sales people and enterprises to deal professionally.
Customer relationship management (CRM ) has become by this trend become an important issue in business theory and practice. Here, however, shows the discrepancy between desire and reality. Plan to introduce a CRM, depending on the survey, implemented between 70 and 80 percent of the companies there have not even 20 percent.
Since CRM defined primarily from the company's perspective on dealing with customer data such as age, location or preference, a discrepancy between the approach of the company is often criticized suspected customers' expectations and their actual performances. In comparison, the so-called customer expectation management ( Customer Experience Management, CEM) has the ambition to build an emotional bond between user and product or provider by creating positive customer experiences. The primary goal of CEM is to turn satisfied customers from loyal customers and loyal customers, " enthusiastic ambassadors" of the brand or product ( "satisfied - loyal - advocate" ).
Critical Note
Customer orientation is basically a matter of course for any business. Their " discovery " by the marketing teaching takes place on a "flat field somewhere between pure Modellplatonismus and theory poor collection of examples " ( Schenk). On the part of the Study of commerce and of trade marketing is criticized often festzustellende in the general marketing theory equating customer = buyer or user of goods. Have industrial enterprises and wholesale companies usually professionals or immediate customers, but not consumers as a " last user ", which are usually only for retail companies direct clients. The strategic approaches of customer orientation suffer partly empirical and / or methodological implications such as an insufficient operationalization ( with the consequence of severe measurability ), at risk of infinite regress, rash on the exclusion of the purchase phase or at the risk of generalization, misleading analogies or excessive abstraction. A measure of the customer orientation needs first always a strict operationalization, which involves the determination of dimensions and an index form, for example. However, the idea of customer orientation is able to prove himself as a heuristic principle for management.
Customer orientation as individual size
With respect to individual size customer orientation, there is no uniform understanding. Best known is the idea that the customer orientation of people would be specified by their behavior towards customers. According to the known from the psychology division of the factors that influence behavior, in attitudes and values that exist parallel to the behavioral dimension of customer orientation, the understanding, the customer orientation of people is a purely psychological size and would be represented by the attitude of people towards customers. New scientific literature posits the concept of customer orientation of people as a value in the sense of conviction. About this strongly demarcating perspectives addition, it is assumed that the customer orientation of individuals both can be rooted in their values , attitudes and behavior, but do not need. This is especially evident in the combination of customer-oriented attitude and customer-oriented behavior. It is quite conceivable that people behave customer-oriented - for example, because they have to do - the importance of the customer is not anchored as attitudinal size in their consciousness.