Customer Centricity

After the earthquake and tsunami occurred in Chile on February 27th 2010, the Technical University Federico Santa Maria was asked to contribute with reconstruction proposals for the commercial infrastructure destroyed in the town “San Juan Bautista”. Located 600 km (~370 mi) away from the continent, this town is not just the home of several endemic species, but is also located next to a National Protected Area and UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. Within this context, the design problem consisted on the development of a component-based strategy and prefabrication requirements, and to reduce to the minimum the implied logistics and environmental impacts of the new buildings. With a Studio of 23 final year students and the support of the Architecture Firms Association, 11 projects were developed using digital tools such as visual programming and digital fabrication. Finally, technical documentation was produced and delivered to the local and government authorities.

The concept of mass customisation is not new yet the UK construction industry has yet to grasp this opportunity to deliver greater value to its customers. The government report Rethinking Construction [Egan 1998] clearly identifies this issue:'We have repeatedly heard the claim that construction is different from manufacturing because every product is unique. We do not agree. Not only are many buildings such as houses, essentially repeat products which can be continually improved but, more importantly, the process of construction is ...

1. Hinweis  zur Literatur ……………………....................………………… 1

2. Erfolgreiche amerikanische Unternehmen ……………………….. 2

2.1 E inführung ………………………………………… ..........................….…  2
2.2 Erfolgskriterien ………………………………..........................………….. 2
2.2.1 Historie ………………………………………...........................….….. 2
2.2.2 Das Mc Kinsey-7s-Modell …………...………................…….. 3
2.3 Untersuchungsmethode ……………………………..................….….. 5
2.3.1 Unternehmenskategorien …………………..............……....… 5
2.3.2 Sechs Kriterien des langfristigen Erfolgs ….....…….….. 5
2.4 Acht Merkmale besonders erfolgreicher Unternehmen .... 6

3. Grundlagen der neuen Theorie …………………………...............…. 7
3.1 E infachheit und Komplexität ………………………………...........…... 7
3.2 Positive Verstärkung ………………………………….........................… 7
3.3 Transformierende Führung ……………………...........…… .............. 7

4. Ein neuer theoretischer Ansatz ………………………................…… 7
4.1 Das Scott Modell …………………………………….........................…... 7
4.2 Grundgedanken zum Verständnis der großen “8” ……..... … 9
4.3 Firmenkultur ……………………………………............................……….. 9
4.4 Evolution ……………………………………………..............................….. 10 

5.     Die  grossen "8" ……………………………………...........…….……...… 10
5.1 Primat des Handelns ………………………………........................... 10
5.2 Durchlässige, flexible Organisation …………………………......... 10
5.3 Experimentierende Unternehmen ……………………...............… 11

6. Nähe zum Kunden ……………………………………….........................… 13
7. Freiraum für Unternehmertum …………................…………………14 
8. Produktivität durch kleine Gruppen ……………............…....... 16
9. Sichtbar gelebtes Wertsystem ……………………….................… 19
10. Bindung an das angestammte Geschäft ……….......…………. 20
11. Einfacher flexibler Aufbau …………………………...................…… 21
12. Straffe lockere Führung …………………....................………………. 22

In today's international business dynamic, customer-centric supply chain management which is the combination of active supply chain entities and supportive interaction systems in organizations is a critical strategic initiative to create competitive values in a global environment. Although the customer-centric supply chain concept is new to the many businesses, they have started to differentiate this concept from others and understand its fundamentals. The main point to be successful in this strategy is to focus on understanding the expectations of customers, developing accurate forecasts and demand planning, increasing information flow throughout the entire supply chain as well as the total quality and efficiency of the chain. This research explores the building blocks of becoming a customer-centric supply chain and its characteristics, strategies that increase the competitiveness in the chain, and the possible results of the implementation of customer-centric supply chain strategies in organizations.

Unternehmen können sich im Wettbewerb nur behaupten, wenn sie eine kundenzentrierte Belegschaft besitzen, die für Kunden relevante und attraktive Angebote erzeugt. Diese seit Jahren bekannte Tatsache zeigt sich in der praktischen Umsetzung für viele Unternehmen als große Hürde. Mit diesem Bewusstsein sollten Unternehmen einen Veränderungsprozess initiieren: Ausgehend vom aktuellen Grad der Kundenzentrierung, die mit dem Customer-Centricity-Score erhoben wird, können sie nun Ansatzpunkte identifizieren, die sie im Rahmen einer Organisationsentwicklung nachhaltig verbessern können. Prof. Jan-Erik Baars 36 Marketing Review St. Gallen 1 | 2017

As the economy moves from recession to expansion, companies are shifting their focus from pruning costs to stimulating growth, particularly organic growth. Launching new products and services is one way of generating organic growth, but this growth is short-lived because competitors almost immediately mimic innovations. Thus, astute companies are increasingly looking to their customers to drive growth–tailoring offerings, indeed their whole organizations, to customers' unique needs. The problem many companies face, however, is: How do you cater to customers who are more demanding than before? In this situation internet marketing and e-commerce opens up new avenues for countries and companies alike to reach to the potential customers. E-commerce stands for electronic commerce and pertains to trading in goods and services through the electronic medium. Having said this, e-commerce is growing by leaps and bounds as the customers are the sole mediators in the whole process. The companies however must have a customer centric approach. This approach facilitates the overall success of the e-commerce strategy and also helps in retaining the customers. This paper focuses of the customer centric approach aspect in e-commerce adoption framework, and useful strategies to persuade and retain the customers.

O fato de você estar lendo este artigo significa que é mais do que provável que você tenha se deparado com a frase "Voz do cliente". Mas você sabe exatamente o que isso significa e como exatamente você pode capturar essa voz?

Vamos analisar como isso é possível, como você pode medi-lo e como usar a voz do cliente para melhorar a experiência do cliente.

There has been a sea-change in the focus of organizations - whether private or public - away from a traditional product- or service-centricity towards customer-centricity and projects are just as much a part of that change. Projects must deliver value; projects must involve stakeholders, and Elizabeth Harrin and Phil Peplow demonstrate convincingly that stakeholders are the ones who get to decide what ’value’ actually means. Customer-Centric Project Management is a short guide explaining what customer-centricity means in terms of how you work and its importance for project performance; using tools and processes to guide customer-centric thinking will help you see the results of engagement and demonstrate how things can improve, even on difficult projects. The text provides a straightforward implementation guide to moving your own business to a customer-centric way of working, using a model called Exceed and provides some guidance for ensuring that customer-centricity is sustainable and supported in the organization. This is a practical, rigorous and well-researched text. It draws on established models and uses the example of project implementation in a healthcare environment to demonstrate the impact of this significant way of thinking about value. The authors can’t guarantee that the Exceed process will radically improve project success rates, and no process can. Adopting a customer-centric mindset and using the Exceed process to measure and monitor customer satisfaction will, however, help you move towards working with happier, more engaged stakeholders.

Models of public governance are changing profoundly due to global and digital transformations and various context-specific societal pressures. One direction of development is the increased utilisation of ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies) in facilitating governance practices. Such changes are intended to improve the performance of public organisations, the quality of democratic governance, and the cost-effectiveness of service delivery. This article outlines the potentials of technological trends in building governance platforms. The discussion is based on such influential trends as open source movement, Web 2.0, geoinformatics, and ubiquitous technologies. An approach that takes into account such e-enabled platform solutions is called platform orientation in public governance, which offers a framework for supporting policy and governance informatics. It’s supposed to provide new tools to create structured environments for governance and the capacity to increase the flexibility and responsiveness of public organisations as governance actors. Such e-enabled governance platforms are an answer to the needs of a highly complex and technologically meditated society with a special view to providing easy access to governance processes, encouraging creativity, sharing information in a cost-effective way, and integrating services and governance processes so that the processes are comprehensible, easy, and value-adding for citizens and other stakeholders.

Gone are the days when companies either focused on their goods or services or on customers. Today where every product or service can be duplicated and copied, customers are left with various options to choose from, that puts the firms at their wits end as to how to sustain in this competitive market and be ahead of others. When comes the question of sustainability, product manufacturing firms have an upper hand in terms of 4Ps or being innovative but the real challenge is faced by the service firms. As service providing firms totally depend on the service they provide and on the first hand encounter with the customers. In a service sector, products don’t rule but the real rulers are the employee. They not only act as boundary spanners for the firm but also are the brand ambassadors and the image of the firm. This employee centrism unfolds the process of employee branding (internal branding) which is an effective tool today for sustainability for the service providing firms. This paper is an attempt to develop a model which shall depict as to how employees branding works and helps the firms in achieving an edge over the competitors and sustain its position in the market.


Key Words: Brand, Competitive Advantage, Employee Branding, Brand Identity

In this chapter, first of all, the basic concepts in the field of marketing will be explained in order to understand the subject better, and then the historical development of marketing will be examined as well. In the last part, the way that companies should apply in a customer centric marketing approach to struggle in the intense competitive environment will be presented in details.

Whereas efficient and effective practical implementation of mass customization in goods industries is a well-researched topic, a deeper understanding of service mass customization is still missing. Particularly service specific challenges have been hitherto unaddressed. These characteristics affect the requirements towards the service design as well as the appropriate education of service employees. One key challenge for service mass customization is to translate information about consumer preferences gained through market research into a format that can be easily used for service modularization decisions and customer-contact personnel training. As solution to this "translation problem" we propose "personas" as a tool for transferring complex market research data into narrative descriptions of archetype customers. Such archetypes convey customization needs in a way that makes it easy for decision makers and employees to understand and to communicate effectively with each other. Along with the concept we introduce a structured approach for developing and using personas in service mass customization projects and provide managerial implications as well as an outlook for further research.

More organisations are adopting customer-centric innovation practices to increase business value; however, very little is known about the factors driving customer-centric innovation or the conditions under which innovation succeeds. Similarly, very little is known about the role of design artefacts as inputs in customer-centric innovation processes or as instruments that support the organisational change required for successful change. A practice-led case study was conducted to examine the role of design artefacts and to demonstrate how they are flexible and persuasive tools that mediate the social and intertwined demands of customer-centric innovation strategies. Five distinct roles of design artefacts are proposed and their value in contributing to innovation and organisational change are considered.

In a short period of time, open design went from an unknown notion to a buzzword in the Dutch design world. This development is usually attributed to the proliferation of bottom-up activities fostered by a typically open Dutch society. However, although open design is commonly associated with grassroots, bottom-up activities, in the Netherlands, the most visible effort at widespread dissemination of these ideals has been the result of a highly centralized effort largely supported by government funding. Why were the government and cultural organizations interested in fostering open design practices? And what type of open practices has this top-down model engendered? Advancing from a constructivist approach, we examine how this discourse has been formed by the convergence of actors with distinct agendas, and position it in relation to its cultural and economic contexts.

Use of New Product Development Methods (NPD) may benefit New Zealand SMEs and entrepreneurial firms in gaining greater market share. In this paper we review the literature on New Product Development, NPD theory, and methods for early stage product design and development. Our reading suggests that product design has greater success when the customer is involved in the design effort. It also recommends methods of approach to new markets in the (NPD) life cycle. The literature further elucidates methods for identification of product design criteria based on customer needs identification. In essence, customer-product interaction in the early stages of product development is important to product success in new markets for entrepreneurial firms and SMEs. Of particular interest are early-stage NPD research methods and their influence on the company's marketing strategy.

Citation:
Coleman, E. B., Frederick, H., & Mellalieu, P. J. (2006). Customer-Product Interaction - A Model for New Product Development in Entrepreneurial Firms. In Third AGSE International Entrepreneurship Research Exchange (AIREX-2006). Auckland: Unitec Institute of Technology. Retrieved from https://www.academia.edu/1513318/Customer-Product_Interaction_-_A_Model_for_New_Product_Development_in_Entrepreneurial_Firms

Related:
Coleman, E. B. (2004). Water & Food Safety Testing Products for New Zealand Mollusc Aquaculture Organisations: A Case Study in New Product Development (Industry-Based Research Project Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Business Innovation and Entrepreneurship). Unitec Institute of Technology, Auckland. Retrieved from http://fgcu.academia.edu/ElizabethBColeman/Papers/1629049/

Citizens and public organisations are increasingly engaging in the co-creation of public services. To be successful, such co-creation efforts require public organisations to engage in organisational learning about citizens' value-creation processes. The purpose of this paper is to explore the antecedents of such organisational learning, drawing on Payne, Storbacka, and Frow's framework about value co-creation management. A model consisting of five factors is suggested and tested via a survey administered to a sample of 204 local government administrators in Italy. The findings highlight the significance of two positive antecedents (public administrators' level of citizen orientation and expected benefits from co-creation) and three negative antecedents (perceived citizens' lack of competencies and experience, perceived biases in citizens' perceptions, and lack of resources) of organisational learning. From the managerial perspective, the model tested in this study can be used by public organisations to evaluate their level of organisational learning.

This article considers the configuration of modular and temporary organization designs. By drawing on two prominent developer firms, namely,Valve Inc. and Linden Lab, respectively,“cabals” and “studios” are explored.The results of interviews conducted with employees of these firms are used as evidence. The article demonstrates that, to various extents, these organization designs organize, facilitate, and maintain how work is accomplished and coordinated within the boundaries of a permanent firm. It extends our understanding of how these designs provide a structure to how tasks are constituted in conjunction with the nature of the product.

Creative consumers (defined as customers who adapt, modify, or transform a proprietary offering) represent an intriguing paradox for business. On one hand, they can signify a black hole for future revenue, with breach of copyright and intellectual property. On the other hand, they represent a gold mine of ideas and business opportunities. Central to business is the need to create and capture value, and creative consumers demand a shift in the mindsets and business models of how firms accomplish both. Based upon their attitude and action toward customer innovation, we develop a typology of firms’ stances toward creative consumers. We then consider the implications of the stances model for corporate strategy and examine a three-step approach to dealing with creative consumers: awareness, analysis, and response.

According to Slack (2010), the business environment has a big impact on what is expected from the operations function within organizations and this is shaping a new operations agenda. As attention on the customer grows, following the global market recession of 2009, together with technological and innovation pressures, cost-based competition, demands for better service, wider choice and variety, as well as the production of frequent and new product lines, the operations agenda will continue to expand into the future.

This paper introduces the aim, scope and content of this special issue on mass customization. It begins by providing a background review of mass customization, which revolves around two questions: what is mass customization, and why mass customize? By focusing on these, the paper presents definitions and explanations of the different approaches to mass customization, and describes the potential reasons for and benefits of mass customization. In addition to setting the scene for the special issue, this introductory review asserts that there is a relative dearth of research on how to design and operate a manufacturing system capable of mass customizing. This is a system design or configuration issue, which involves determining the most appropriate or viable design for the available range of multiple and interdependent design variables. However, despite the strong interest in configurational research in the business and operations strategy area, there are few works that develop and propose models for understanding how to mass customize.

More organizations are adopting
customer-centric innovation practices to increase
business value; however, very little is known about
the factors driving customer-centric innovation or the
conditions under which innovation succeeds.
Similarly, very little is known about the role of design
artefacts as inputs in customer-centric innovation
processes or as instruments that support the
organizational change required for successful
505 The Design Journal DOI: 10.1080/14606925.2019.1614811
THE DESIGN JOURNAL VOLUME 22, ISSUE 4
PP 505–527
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DIRECTLY FROM
THE PUBLISHERS
PHOTOCOPYING
PERMITTED BY
LICENSE ONLY
© 2019 INFORMA UK
LIMITED, TRADING AS
TAYLOR & FRANCIS
GROUP PRINTED IN
THE UK
change. A practice-led case study was conducted to
examine the role of design artefacts and to demonstrate
how they are flexible and persuasive tools that mediate the
social and intertwined demands of customer-centric
innovation strategies. Five distinct roles of design artefacts
are proposed and their value in contributing to innovation
and organizational change are considered.

The article provides significant new insights into the development and implementation of
e-business strategies that will contribute to the Indian Railways’ efficiency in satisfying
passengers.
The success of application of e-business strategy to railways depends on the value added
of e-business to railways. Currently, the Indian Railways is looking at e-business to
protect its assets and to secure customer's satisfaction, and to be successful in generating
more revenue. In view of the new features of Internet, the core question of this paper is:
Can Customer-Centric E-Business System Help The Indian Railways?
In order to provide an answer to this question, the researchers conducted an online survey
and developed a Customer Centric E-Business (CCEB) System Model for the Indian
Railways. With respect to the typology suggested by Porter, the results indicate that
Porter's model was essential in evaluating the railways under both descriptive and
elucidative aspects.
It has been 3 years since Indian Railways introduced e-ticketing with the intention of
doing away with the need for carrying a physical ticket. The Railways need to develop an
overall strategy covering: strategic management, IT infrastructure, design, content, ecommerce
systems, marketing and customer service. The Railways also needs to be
creative and entrepreneurial. As every entrepreneur knows, one will only be truly
successful if one provides genuine value to the customers and solves their problems.
The success of the Indian Railways applications and the communications, data, and
control afforded by the Internet are encouraging. The Internet is not just another medium
or a distribution channel to reach customers. It is an important medium to find new
customers and continue relationships with current customers.
Key Words – Indian Railways, E-Ticketing, Porter’s model, Indian infrastructure,
Passenger Reservation

Purpose
The contributions proposed in this paper are motivated by principles of incompatibility, and non‐equilibrium states, existing between the continuous growth in the level of environmental complexity and the insufficient cognitive capacity of the organization. From such a view, the purpose of this paper is to ask: what are the core competencies of the new industrial organization in the twenty‐first century?
Design/methodology/approach
First, the paper examines the characteristics and limitations of past and current industrial organizations; second, it contributes by extending their frontiers and by proposing technological, managerial and organizational core competencies of the new enterprise.
Findings
From such analyses, this paper introduces the features of customer‐centric systems (CCS) which represent new industrial organizations in the pursuit of high degrees of organizational cognition, intelligence and autonomy, and consequently, high degrees of agility and flexibility, in order to manage high levels of environmental complexity and uncertainty, to operate through intensive mass customization, and to provide customers with immersiveness.
Research limitations/implications
For further research, this paper suggests the investigation of practical implementation of the features of the new enterprise of CCS. In such a direction, it recommends additional reading on the concept and design of computational organizational management networks.
Practical implications
This paper emphasizes that CCS are firm types which strategically organize their resources and competencies around customers' values and needs, in order to involve customers into their business. By involving customers into their task environments and business, CCS‐based firms have the chance to understand their clients' real needs and to produce the appropriate goods and services.
Originality/value
The uniqueness of this paper lies in its attempt to master, analyze and integrate technological, managerial and organizational perspectives of past and current manufacturing organizations, which contribute to illuminate features and to identify core competencies of future industrial firms, which are in the pursuit of innovation and sustainable competitive advantage in the twenty‐first century.

Highly competitive business environments make innovation a key element for survival. Though there are many companies that have been market leaders, they failed. The main reason behind the failure is lack of innovation. This is why companies have to find new discoveries and strategies to survive. Even though innovation is generally defined as a creation of idea, it is more than an idea. It is a process that includes a series of steps that begin with imagination and result in the creation of something. Innovation provides solutions for requirements in a unique way. Before the imagination steps, companies have to understand deeply customers' needs or desires to define requirements of customers. In this chapter, the customer-centric innovation process explained in seven stages.

The customization of a service often depends on the “performance” delivered by front-stage service employees. Drawing on theories of dramaturgy and service marketing, we present a typology of four distinct and viable configurations for achieving different types of service customization. We explain how variations in the time pressure to customize a service, and the degree of customization required, combine to determine the characteristics of each configuration. With service organizations increasingly operating on a global basis, we discuss the fit between the preferences of different multicultural segments, the operational characteristics of a configuration, and the level of customization offered

This paper considers user participation in 3D development practices, known as mod development, in the commercial setting of the 3D software industry. This study is designed to learn more about the increasing importance attributed to user participation in this context with the aim of highlighting interdependencies developing between the firm, users, and technologies directing our attention to the exploration of the boundaries of participation and competition. For this purpose, this study draws on several prominent instances where 3D software developer firms facilitate or invite users to participate in development practices. The results of interviews conducted with employees of Valve Inc. and Linden Lab, and an online survey with their respective user base are used as evidence.

We intend to design and study systems that produce artifacts with biological generative systems, where nature’s randomness and physiological needs have an important role in defining form. To understand these systems we will develop, analyze and criticize experimental models with ants, bees and mushrooms. In these models the matrices of construction and the system are defined, but the outcomes will be uncertain due to their dependence on biological variables.
Our goal is the development of artifacts in an embryonic stage as well as of the constraints for their development. By defining the matrix and some guidelines, we aim to make available to the general public systems that reproduce artifacts that are similar in their genesis, but which become unique due to their biological actuators. Among other factors, these artifacts seek to enhance an emotional bond between users and object; this bond happens due to the empathy that is generated by the proximity and the time that is required for their growth, and by the better comprehension of their morphogenesis and process. This nurturing is essential for the evolution of the matrix into the desired product.
The final products are unique and unrepeatable, and the end result arises from the close relation between the cooperators: the designer that develops the system, the person that uses it and the actuators that execute it. We believe the deeper understanding of the artifacts geneses and the bond that is created with it may result in new aesthetic qualities.

New economic assets which touch all aspect of society in the 21st century is Personal data. On daily basis, around 470 million (non-spam) emails are sent and 9.5 billion tweets are fed on Twitter. Ever month, user uploads 3 billion content on social media like Facebook. Big currency of today era is personal data that can be monetized. Personal data is the new oil or can say Uranium for 21st century. Marketers can contribute a lot in customer’s life in big way and enable customers to live a better life. Marketers can add value to the customer lives. For benchmarking of organizations personal data can be used. Organizations on the basis of personal data can customize product business. From creating more brands, the focus should shift to customer of companies needs to be customer centric. This paper will discuss about how data can be used by marketer to improve customer experiences. How there is massive shift in customer bargaining, how data has become the new asset and now how organizations can build up new models on the basis of data.

Pedir a seus clientes para concluir uma pesquisa de satisfação é como começar uma conversa com eles; e você deve fazer tudo o que puder para elaborar o design da pesquisa de satisfação como tal.

Quando seus clientes aceitam um convite para participar de sua pesquisa, eles concordam em oferecer seu tempo para conversar com você sobre suas necessidades e expectativas, além de compartilhar o que eles acharam de sua experiência com sua marca.

Mas, assim como em qualquer conversa, é difícil para os participantes da pesquisa permanecerem engajados se sentirem que a discussão está se arrastando ou se algo cheira mal.

Recent theorizing has proposed that modular product and process architectures are key enablers of strategic flexibility. We formulated an integrative conceptual model encompassing antecedents, contributing factors, and outcomes of modularity. We then tested this model on data from managers in U.S. and U.K. home appliance companies using structural equations modeling. The results indicate a positive relationship between modular product architectures and performance, with product model variety as a mediating variable. The results also highlight linkages between perceptions of market context and the use of modular products architectures, and between complementary organizational capabilities and firm performance. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Recent theorizing has proposed that modular product and process architectures are key enablers of strategic flexibility. We formulated an integrative conceptual model encompassing antecedents, contributing factors, and outcomes of modularity. We then tested this model on data from managers in U.S. and U.K. home appliance companies using structural equations modeling. The results indicate a positive relationship between modular product architectures and performance, with product model variety as a mediating variable. The results also highlight linkages between perceptions of market context and the use of modular products architectures, and between complementary organizational capabilities and firm performance. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

This presentation proposes a short overview of a pilot application developed by FMSH-ESCoM for the European R&D project LOGOS (6th FP) called « People and Cultures of the World » (PCM standing for “Peuples et Cultures du Monde”).
PCM is a video portal based exclusively on re-appropriated videos (i.e. re-described, re-indexed, re-published,... videos with respect to specific user communities and needs).  Its URL is: http://semioweb.msh-paris.fr/corpus/pci/EN/Default.asp
PCM is a concrete example for user-centric re-appropriation strategies of digital heritage resources by the means of sophisticated semantic (semiotic) technologies available through a technical platform enabling any (habilitated) user to work with video resources and to publish them following his/her specific needs and desires.