Экономические науки/6. Маркетинг и менеджмент

Д.э.н. Балабаниц А.В., студ. Региня Е.А.

Донецкий национальный университет экономики и торговли имени Михаила Туган-Барановского

CUSTOMER-ORIENTED STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT

Today a lot of scientists have come to conclusion that only customer-oriented companies develop successfully on the international market, constantly increasing the sales and attracting more customers.

In this connection, the purpose of this work is to examine the importance of customer orientation and ways of adaption of company’s strategy to it.

Kotler, author and professor of International Marketing at Kellogg School of Management, describes the evolution of marketing and the influence of customers. According to him, marketing has moved from a focus on the mass market to a focus on market segments to a focus on one-to-one customer relations. He thinks that current marketing is moving from a transaction-orientation to a customer-relationship-building orientation. Already in 1954, without talking about marketing, Drucher explained the importance of customers and asserted that "There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer ... It is the customer who determines what the business is"(Drucher, 1954 in Marketing Redefined, 2004). In a simple definition, Clancy as well emphasises the importance of customers in the role of marketing: "Marketing is making sure you make the stuff customers want" (Clancy, in Marketing Redefined, 2004) [1, p.4].

On market places, companies have also realized that adapting the products to the customers' needs or tastes was more profitable than attempting to change the customers to fit the firm's purposes (McKitterick, 1957). Today, customers are becoming better organized, well informed and more demanding. Those changes are the reason why companies may develop customer-orientation. In the literature, it is sometimes really hard to make the difference between “customer-oriented” and “market-driven” or “customer-driven” and “market-oriented”. The goals of those four concepts are to create or adapt products to the customers on the national or on foreign markets [1, p.4].

Effective customer-oriented sales strategies can ensure small business success. The main phases for creation such strategies are:

- identifying and segmenting customers;

- learning about customer needs and preferences;

- building relationships;

- engaging in service recovery and continuous improvement [2].

A customer-oriented organization places customer satisfaction at the core of each of its business decisions. Customer orientation is defined as an approach to sales and customer-relations in which staff focus on helping customers to meet their long-term needs and wants. Here, management and employees align their individual and team objectives around satisfying and retaining customers. This contrasts, in part, with a sales orientation, which is a strategic approach where the needs and wants of the firm or salesperson are valued over the customer.

Firstly, successful manager should organize training and empowering staff.

Salespeople, call-center staff and customer-service representatives are front-line communicators of a company's customer-orientation. As a result, efforts to implement customer-orientation strategies should encompass a strong training component for front-line employees occupying customer contact- or boundary-spanning roles. It also requires management empowering staff to use a wider range of individual initiatives to solving customer problems. For example, a service engineer for a computer products retailer might be empowered to resolve product defects at a customers' work site under certain conditions. This approach impacts a customer's perception of the company's dedication to customer service [3].

Secondly, manager should supply operations orientation.

An operations-oriented management contrasts with a customer-oriented management style. A company invested in an operations orientation focuses its resources on designing and monitoring business operations and production as the main driver of business success. The aim is efficiency, or to use the absolute minimum amount of resources to meet customer needs [3].

In summary, we’d like to underline that customer focus involves attention not to the imaginary, but to the existing and emerging customer expectations. If a company is long-sighted and ready for additional investments, critical reassessment and restructuring of their work with clients, it has all the chances to get their appreciation for customer orientation.

Literature:

1. Ingrid Mignon, Hui He. The Impact of Customer Orientation on the Business Strategies: the Customisation Case of Nestle on French and Chinese Dairy Market [Electronic resource]. – Access mode: http://liu.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:20081/FULLTEXT01

2. Leigh Richards. Four Phases of a Customer-Oriented Sales Strategy [Electronic resource]. – Access mode: http://smallbusiness.chron.com/four-phases-customer-oriented-sales-strategy-5261.html

3. Vanessa Cross. Customer Orientation Examples [Electronic resource]. – Access mode: http://smallbusiness.chron.com/customer-orientation-examples-10201.html