Abstract
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to plot out pathways for organizations to implement a customer focus. These pathways are outlined with the help of illustrative examples. A well-defined customer focus is vital for organizations to ensure that they are positioned to be in line with the customers’ actual needs. Design/methodology/approach This is a conceptual paper where the argumentation is built on previous research findings, the authors’ reflections and the use of illustrative case examples of companies managing to instill a customer focus. Findings This paper builds a framework of potential pathways toward a customer focus by considering four strategic questions related to competition, products, insights and metrics. Practical implications This paper encourages managers to move beyond labeling themselves as customer-oriented and to actually implement a customer focus. This study puts forth a framework with strategic questions and principles designed to help with these endeavors. Originality/value Many companies pay lip service to customer focus, and it is often merely part of the corporate jargon without any real connection to strategy, the business model or everyday practices. This paper addresses the issue further by highlighting the potential pathways through which an organization can achieve a customer focus.
Highlights
A lmost every corporation likes to highlight being customer-oriented, customer-driven or customer-focused, at least in their external stakeholder communications
In contrast to the inside-out approach, an outside-in approach to strategy moves the perspective of decision-making to external realities: it starts from the organization’s customers and what is relevant to their needs rather than what the organization is “good at.”
An outside-in approach is crucial to transform organizational decision-making and activities to be more in line with the marketplace so that the organization is better positioned in relation to customers’ actual needs, competitor initiatives and emerging marketplace trends
Summary
A lmost every corporation likes to highlight being customer-oriented, customer-driven or customer-focused, at least in their external stakeholder communications. Even if the organization manages to spot an emerging trend in the market, rigidities can hinder its ability to adapt to that change While arguably both firm-centric (inside-out) and customer-focused (outside-in) thinking are needed (Yrjolaet al., 2018), there is an imbalance of power between these two decision-making orientations. The categorization of inside-out and outside-in orientations is well established in the management literature These two orientations have been used to characterize whether strategic decision-making, marketing capabilities and mental models start from internal or external points of references (Day and Moorman, 2010; Hooley et al, 2001; Saeed et al, 2015; Yrjolaet al., 2018). Productcentric companies might put too much effort into protecting their best-performing existing products and fending off close competitors at the expense of improving customer value in the long term
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