Authors: Ann-Charlott Pedersen; Christine Storer; Elesbeth Holman
The importance of a market orientation as the basis for meeting customer expectationsis well known in marketing (Kohli and Jaworski 1990). The basis of this orientation isan understanding of who the customers are and what they want. While it may beexpected that all organisations can identify customers through the chain and the finalend consumer, the organisations in this case study did not. Many could identifycategories of customers and the specific requirements they had, but not the customers’names. Those organisations downstream and closer to consumers had a greaterunderstanding of who the customers were and what end consumers were looking for.Upstream suppliers were only aware of downstream customers if they had a goodreason to such as on-going discussions to meet major quality specifications through thechain. Based on the case study, it is hypothesised that the culture of the organisationhas an impact, with some organisations more aware of the importance of understandingcustomer requirements and having a focus on meeting those where ever possible. Inaddition, there was some variance in the attitudes of individuals, with purchasingdepartments more focused on cost minimisation and efficiencies, and marketing morefocused on meeting customer requirements and effectiveness. There was also adifference in customer knowledge and understanding at an individual level with thosewith greater “boundary spanning” roles having greater exposure to customers andtherefore having a greater understanding.
Journal: ( – )
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Publish Year: 2002
Conference: Perth, Australia (2002)