Factfile 1
Customers are the driving force of any business. In this new interactive customer-focussed marketplace of e-commerce and e-communication, the firm?s primary sustainable competitive advantage will not be its product, price, distribution or even promotion. Most of these can be easily and quickly duplicated by competitors.
Key insights:
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The only real, sustainable advantages will thus be the organisation?s customer information, its brands, and its skills in building ongoing relationships with customers and others in the system.
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The future is likely to head towards the dominance of the Customer Marketer. These firms concentrate on the emerging interactive marketplace where customers control most of the power. With perfect or near-perfect knowledge, ability to sift and value products and services from all over the world, the capacity to compare products and price-value at the click of a button, the customer becomes the most powerful unit in the system.
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In a business-to-business arena, this is particularly significant.
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At this point, it is important to understand the differences between business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumers (B2C) environments; an issue that will be covered at greater length below. In a B2B environment, companies have fewer customers with whom they have longer-term relationships. Customer loyalty is therefore a must and being customer-focused essential.
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To ensure customer delight and thereby long and fruitful business relationships, it therefore becomes crucial for a company not only to understand their customers, but their markets as well.