Question

Customers are said to be value maximizers and will seek to buy from the firm they perceive as delivering the greatest value. Conversely, companies need to understand which customers are profitable and to extract the maximum lifetime value by effectively managing customer relationships.   Market-oriented firms that are able to do this effectively may well find themselves in a position that will permit them to achieve superior firm performance.

(i) Define success for the market-oriented firm in the context of the customer. What defining characteristics does the successful market-oriented firm have? How are these attributes used to create marketing success? Please use examples to illustrate the points you make.

Answer 1

Market orientation is a marketing philisophy where the concentric point is customer.When an organization has a market orientation approach, it majorly focuses on designing and selling goods and services that will satisfy consumer needs in order to be profitable. The successful market-oriented company discovers and meets the desires and needs of its customers through its product mix.Market orientation can be said as more of a culture than an individual process. It is the mindsets, values, beliefs, norms and behaviors of companies, together with the systems, structure and control of the organization.Market orientation is equal to response regarding customers needs and wants.Customer oriented company can be said as Apple as its evey innovation is eye catchy and customer centric.

Characteristics:

1)The firm knows what their potential customers want.

2)The response of the firm is as per the market feedback. Once the firms understand what current and future customers want, marketing-oriented companies meet and exceed those desires.Apple is the biggest example of this feature.

3)Market -Oriented companies always build anticipation around the new releases. Excitement is also built by differentiating their products and providing more than expected.

Hence to summarize customer oriented approach we can say Marketing ,oriented firms make the customers their focal point,spend considerable amount of money in staff training and development so that better customer service can be provided, focus on new product development.

Example-Apple,Amazon,Maybelline.

Customer centric is the need of the time .Competition has increased so much and the customer has so much option that customer loyalaty now a days has become a question.Being customer centric includes improvements in customer service and product support geared to solving concerns raised by consumers. This approach always make sure that customer satisfaction remains high with the company as a whole and promotes brand loyalty and positive word-of-mouth advertising.