Introducing customer blind spots: a cognitive approach on noncustomers

Abstract

This paper goes beyond conventional wisdom in marketing that urges managers to better serve their extant customers or attract resistant customers. We argue that firms can benefit from stretching their market and adapting their offer to target extant, unconsidered noncustomers who have been excluded from markets because of taken-for-granted assumptions about consumption barriers like price, time, or skills that are actually surmountable. Adopting a cognitive approach of the consumer identification and selection process by managers, it presents consumption as not only depending on the willingness of customers to consume but also on how managers perceive and interpret the customers' ability to be consumers. The paper introduces the concept of ‘customer blind spots’ to designate those worthy customers that managers ignore and do not spot, elaborates a theory of why managers fail to spot some worthy customers, and presents various strategies that can help firms escape customer blind spots.