The notion of being customer-centric is focused on have a positive customer experience because of a differentiation that is unique to the company and valued by the customer so that profits accrue.

How do we achieve that differentiation? How do we know that the point of difference is valued by our customers so that they smile and part with their hard earned cash? Certainly that cannot be achieved by copying what others do even when the ‘others’ are in a different country. Your customers are unique and have their own identity and desires.  To reach them you have to understand them and you can best do so by studying them in their natural habitat: how they solve their problems in their everyday lives.

Some of us like Panorama and believe the girl of our dreams would love to go to Panorama without even asking her what she wanted. We concoct products, create and spend big sums of money on fancy advertisements. We fool ourselves into believing that flashing cash or promotions or sampling or fill in the blanks will be a foolproof way of bringing customers in. The short answer is NO. It does not.

A customer buys the product, the brand that meets their specific need at a point in time. At the core, there is an exchange: you give a bundle of attributes that can fulfill a desire and you get a stream of cash over a long period of time. Market research job is to figure out what that bundle of attributes is for the desired target market. Spend some time looking more closely at your customer, it may surprise you.

Written by Noble Philip, Chairman. September 17th, 2014