Disentangling customer orientation – executive perspective

Abstract

Purpose

Despite the fact that customer orientation is increasingly used as a strategic guideline to ensure companies’ long-term success, it is too often left at conceptual level without any managerial or executive translation. To address this practical gap, the purpose of the paper is to build an executive perspective on customer orientation through the mechanism of customer value dimensions.

Design/methodology/approach

An intensive case study from a successful retail service business is used to illustrate how customer orientation is applied in actual strategic decision making at the executive level. The case business is a multi-sector service business that took a strategic turn toward customer orientation in the 2000s. As a result, the company has been able to increase their market share to become the market leader as well as stay ahead of the competition and increase customer loyalty.

Findings

The study provides a practical tool of disentangling customer orientation into four customer value dimensions and linking them with appropriate executive level strategic decision making.

Practical implications

The study helps executives uncover the inner meaning of customer orientation, move beyond traditional conceptualization of customer orientation, and adopt customer value orientation. This necessitates not only understanding customer value criteria, but also linking the diverse criteria to executive level strategic decision making.

Originality/value

The study concretizes and uncovers how customer orientation can be implemented by incorporating both economic, functional, emotional, and symbolic customer value dimensions into executive level strategic decision making.

Citation

Saarijärvi, H., Kuusela, H., Neilimo, K. and Närvänen, E. (2014), "Disentangling customer orientation – executive perspective", Business Process Management Journal, Vol. 20 No. 5, pp. 663-677. https://doi.org/10.1108/BPMJ-06-2013-0068