Searching for ways to meet market and competition requirements, which allow an enterprise to gain a competitive advantage, is increasingly associated with focusing on the needs and expectations of customers. A prerequisite for properly identifying and satisfying these needs is the implementation of a customer orientation.
Adopting and implementing a customer orientation may mean, in particular, identifying the goals, needs, and problems of customers, and orienting and adjusting the enterprise’s supply offer to the subjective requirements of customers. Implementing this orientation can contribute to achieving the expected market and economic effects related to changes occurring in enterprise management.
Basic determinants of customer orientation
Customer orientation is generally associated with the marketing concept. Ph. Kotler lists the following among the basic determinants of customer orientation:
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defining and selecting the target market,
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determining ways to identify and satisfy customer needs,
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developing an integrated composition of marketing instruments (marketing-mix),
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determining the level of expected profitability of served markets and offered products.
Implementing a customer orientation also requires an appropriate definition of the enterprise’s mission and strategic directions of its development, subordinated to the realization of value for the customer, as well as the design and application of organizational solutions oriented towards customer service and satisfying their needs. This requires logically incorporating goals related to customer orientation into the enterprise’s goal structure and integrating the customer service strategy with the enterprise strategy.
Thanks to adopting a customer orientation, it is possible to build and maintain long-term, beneficial relationships with customers. However, maintaining these relationships requires systematic measurement of customer satisfaction levels, as well as the design and implementation of solutions that condition the growth of customer loyalty.
Customer orientation as a component of market orientation
According to some authors, customer orientation is an integral component of another, “broader” orientation, referred to as market orientation. According to L. Garbarski, I. Rutkowski, and W. Wrzosek, enterprises adopting market orientation as the basis of their operations should treat not only the efforts to identify and satisfy customer needs (customer orientation), but also ventures related to monitoring the behavior of competitors and potentially reacting to their behavior in the market (competitor orientation). Market orientation includes in particular:
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gathering (at the enterprise level) market knowledge regarding current and future customers,
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sharing this knowledge and disseminating it throughout the enterprise,
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the enterprise’s reaction to market signals.
Market orientation is therefore characterized by two basic dimensions – the demand dimension and the competitive dimension. This means that in striving to implement a market orientation, in addition to focusing on customer needs, the enterprise should also take into account the intentions of competitors. This can be particularly important not only for ensuring full satisfaction and success of customers, thanks to effective positioning and presenting an offer of products and/or services on the market that solve their problems, but also for the enterprise to achieve the expected economic effects and competitive advantage.
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Source: Logistyka Magazine 1/2013