SUPERIOR CUSTOMER VALUE IN THE NOW ECONOMY

                         Image source: Tim Nichols (2014) – “Experiential Marketing on The High Street” (ExactDrive™).


The growth of online shopping has led many traditional brick-and-mortar retailers to create and emphasize unique in-store shopping activities and experiences as a way to compete with online retailers. This is known as experiential retailing, and the idea behind this trend is that the one thing online retailers can’t offer is the in-store experience. Therefore, if offline stores can develop truly interesting, entertaining, and/or one-of-a-kind shopping activities/experiences, that would be one way to effectively compete.
There are a number of examples of companies engaging in experiential retailing. For instance, Bass Pro Shops Outdoor World superstores feature a number of attractions that make each store a unique destination, such as indoor waterfalls, gigantic aquariums, archery ranges, and ponds with fish native to the store’s area. In addition, the stores hold a numb…

In the rapidly changing landscape of B2B sales, factors such as technology, competitive intensity, and rising sales support costs oblige greater attention to customer relationships. Many companies that have an enterprise focus struggle with the concept of “owning the customer” (Weeks 2016). Given that customers are buying in different ways, firms are driven to engage customers differently. According to Cooper (2016), “customer ownership is all about creating, delivering and communicating compelling value”. In nurturing and developing customers through the B2B life cycle, multiple departments and functional units in the firm are entwined in customer relationship management (CRM). The complexity of CRM and dynamism in customers’ relationship expectations require that sales, marketing, service, and support work together through the customer buying and fulfillment process. The diffusion of tasks and responsibilities exposes a fundamental CRM gap: who truly owns the customer? A recent Amer…

[I behave as if every IBM customer were on the verge of leaving and that I’d do anything to keep them from bolting.  Buck Rodgers] Given the opportunity, dissatisfied customers will tell 5 to 20 other people about the source of their service or product-related frustrations. However, if you make a prompt effort to resolve the issue, 85% of those customers are likely to remain customers (service recovery must be a key strategy).

Why, then, do most companies spend a majority of their time, energy and resources chasing new business? While it’s important to find new customers to replace lost business, to grow the enterprise and to expand into new markets, a smart company’s main objective should be to keep customers and enhance customer relationships. With the passage of time, it is getting easier, because newer and better CRM systems help you track, sort, and analyze meaningful customer data to make better marketing decisions. What is your current retention rate? What is the cost of a lost c…

[You can drive your business or be driven out of business.  B.C. Forbes]
                               Reprinted with permission of InetSoft Technology, Piscataway, NJ, www.inetsoft.com
The late Ed Koch, a former New York City mayor, always asked, “How am I doing?” Marketers — as well as government leaders — need to know if their “customers” are happy. Perhaps you head the marketing operations for your company and want to get a better handle on customer metrics. You heard about the idea of a marketing dashboard at a recent trade association meeting and think that may solve your problem. How should you proceed? What should be on your dashboard?  Progressing beyond a single item to monitor the effectiveness of business performance, leading organizations often use a set of key metrics called marketing dashboards to understand their key performance indicators. Just as an automobile dashboard captures critical driving information such as speed, distance, fuel levels, vehicle and engine temper…

People generally fear losses more than they covet gains; losses are weighted more heavily than an equivalent amount of gains, e.g., the absolute joy felt in finding $50 is a lot less than the absolute pain caused by losing $50, a phenomenon known as “loss-aversion”.  Kahneman and Tversky stumbled upon loss aversion after giving their students a simple survey, which asked whether or not they would accept a variety of different bets. The psychologists noticed that, when people were offered a gamble on the toss of a coin in which they might lose $20, they demanded an average payoff of at least $40 if they won. The pain of a loss was approximately twice as potent as the pleasure generated by a gain. As Kahneman and Tversky aptly put it, “In human decision making, losses loom larger than gains.” If you ever kept a gym membership long after it has become clear that you are not now and will never be a gym rat, then you have felt the effects (i.e. “dead-loss” effect) of loss aversion. Think ab…

[Co-creation is the purposeful action of partnering with strategic customers, partners or employees to ideate, problem solve, improve performance, or create a new product, service or business. Christine Crandell]

Customer focus no longer means just researching current and future needs to design expected or desire goods or service. A rising trend in business today is co-creating value with customers. Value is created when product and buyer come together within a particular use situation. Examples include retailers getting the customer involved in the shopping experience to save time (Home Depot’s self-checkout) or costs (IKEA’s assembly and delivery by customers), smart phone personalization through app selection, Dell’s online built-to-order computers, and management consultants collaborating with clients to add value in research projects. As the table below explains, co-creation of value has a dual emphasis on the customer and company as value creators. 

Value Creation and Marketing Op…