“The customer is king” has long been proclaimed by businesses large and small the world over. But how many customers feel like royalty today? Ask people about their purchasing experiences and you will hear stories in which they were treated more like serfs than kings. One will tell you about the lights that failed in his newly designed kitchen; another will complain about her attempt to get service through a call center; a third will sigh about the time her wireless company gave her a cell phone to use overseas that did not work; and a fourth will describe how he had to return to his car dealer a second time so that the mechanics could fix their own mistake. These tales of woe are endless, and not even the best, most admired companies escape mention.
Fifty years after Peter Drucker first proposed the “marketing concept” — the idea that companies can make their shareholders rich by meeting customers’ needs — there is still a large gap between theory and practice. We lay much of the blame for this on companies’ obsession with uniqueness and differentiation. According to conventional wisdom, businesses must offer something unique in order to compete successfully; the rub is that this task is becoming more and more difficult as products and services become more and more similar. The only solutions, this... To read the complete article, login or sign-up using the form below.
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