1.

What is customer oriented

What Is the Meaning of Customer Orientation?

by Zachary Fenell - Updated September 26, 2017

Customer orientation refers to customer-centric business. This model provides a

personalized customer experience that focuses on establishing healthy relationships
between service providers and consumers by first identifying a customer’s needs.

Customer-oriented Examples

A customer-oriented organization places customer satisfaction at the core of each of its

business decisions. Customer orientation is defined as an approach to sales and
customer-relations in which staff focus on helping customers to meet their long-term
needs and wants. Here, management and employees align their individual and team
objectives around satisfying and retaining customers. This contrasts, in part, with a
sales orientation, which is a strategic approach where the needs and wants of the firm
or salesperson are valued over the customer.

Customer Orientation Examples

by Vanessa Cross

A customer-oriented organization places customer satisfaction at the core of each of its

business decisions. Customer orientation is defined as an approach to sales and
customer-relations in which staff focus on helping customers to meet their long-term
needs and wants. Here, management and employees align their individual and team
objectives around satisfying and retaining customers. This contrasts, in part, with a
sales orientation, which is a strategic approach where the needs and wants of the firm
or salesperson are valued over the customer.

Training and Empowering Staff

Salespeople, call-center staff and customer-service representatives are front-line

communicators of a company's customer-orientation. As a result, efforts to implement
customer-orientation strategies should encompass a strong training component for
front-line employees occupying customer contact- or boundary-spanning roles. It also
requires management empowering staff to use a wider range of individual initiatives to
solving customer problems. For example, a service engineer for a computer products
retailer might be empowered to resolve product defects at a customers' work site under
certain conditions. This approach impacts a customer's perception of the company's
dedication to customer service.

Michigan State University

Michigan State University's commitment to customer orientation is illustrated by its

inclusion in its Organizational Success statement designed to inform and train support
staff. MSU customer-orientation statement includes performance targets such as
effectively responding to the concerns and needs of customers in a timely and accurate
manner. The organization's customer-orientation goals also aim to minimize the
procedures required to meet customer needs. This might include reducing the level of
internal bureaucracy necessary to solve a customer problem.

Operations Orientation

An operations-oriented management contrasts with a customer-oriented management

style. A company invested in an operations orientation focuses its resources on
designing and monitoring business operations and production as the main driver of
business success. The aim is efficiency, or to use the absolute minimum amount of
resources to meet customer needs.

United Parcel Service

During the 1980s, the United Parcel Service transitioned from an operations-oriented
company to one that focuses primarily on customer orientation. This decision was due
in part to increased market competition that forced UPS to change its efficiency-focused
philosophy. This is not to suggest that the customer-orientation model does not value
efficiency as an important factor in business. It just is not the main factor -- customer
satisfaction is. This required UPS to change its corporate culture, including reshaping
how employees viewed their roles and functions within the organization. For example, in
1994, UPS created 15 cross-functional teams whose objective was to develop creative
transportation-related solutions for its largest customers. By 1997, this developed into a
separate subsidiary, UPS Professional Services, Inc., a company charged with focusing
on the needs of its largest customers.
 2. Definition of Customer-Centric Marketing

What is Customer-Centric Marketing?

Customer-centric marketing is a strategy that places the individual customer at the center of
marketing design and delivery. It starts from the realization that there is no “average” customer.
Customers have different behaviors and preferences – and this presents rich opportunities to
move past a “one-size-fits-all” marketing approach.

Customer-centric marketing teams think of their customer base as their greatest long-term
investment. A useful analogy might be a financial portfolio containing different types of assets:
stocks, bonds, and money market funds. These assets are all important in delivering long-term
value. But they behave in fundamentally different ways – and the overall value of the portfolio is
maximized by managing these assets differently.

Similarly, your loyal weekly customer who loves engaging with your brand on social media is
different from your casual holiday shopper who only buys items on steep discount. And as a
customer-centric marketer, you have an opportunity to communicate to these customers in
fundamentally different ways.

Customer-centric marketing stands in contrast to other common marketing approaches, including

the following:

Channel-centric marketing: Optimize individual channels based on channel-specific metrics

(e.g., “likes” or followers for social media, opens and click-throughs for email)

Product-centric marketing: Optimize sales of individual product categories or brands, or of the

overall mix/”portfolio” of products

Event-based: Manage marketing decisions based on optimizing events of interest (e.g., on-site
conversions)

The limitation of each of these approaches in isolation is that they miss out on opportunities to
synthesize rich insights about individual customers. You might be trying to push a particular
customer a cardigan – but what if she would respond better to a dress? You might be trying to
maximize a customer’s engagement with email today – but what if he would actually be likelier
to respond to fewer, more targeted messages? And what if he reads and loves your emails, but
always go to your site directly to make his purchases, so these purchases are not reflected in your
email metrics?

Customer centricity empowers the marketing team to target the right customer with the right
channel and right message – at the right time. It also helps teams align around a strategy that will
drive long-term value to the business: acquiring high-value customers, and keeping them coming
back.

1. REI encourages customers to #OptOutside.

Apparel company REI shocked the retail world this year when it announced that it won’t be open
for Black Friday. The company closed its 143 retail locations, encouraging its employees and
customers to #OptOutside “to reconnect with family and friends” during the Thanksgiving
holidays. As part of the initiative, the company opened a microsite where people could get
recommended hiking trails as well as other tips to enjoy the outdoors.

REI’s bold move resulted in positive word of mouth.

“Whether [the campaign] will move sales long-term is yet to be seen, but the leaders of the
Seattle-based chain clearly considered what resonates with its customer base when making their
headline-grabbing decision,” commented Brian Pearson, president of customer analytics
company LoyaltyOne, in Forbes. “And that is a good sign.”

2. Asda drops out of Black Friday.

U.K.-based retailer Asda also pulled back with its Black Friday initiatives this year. The
company said it wanted to avoid “holding customers hostage” over sales—a decision it made
after listening to feedback.
“The decision to step away from Black Friday is not about the event itself,” explained company
CEO Andy Clarke. “Over the last two years we’ve developed an organised, well-executed plan,
but this year customers have told us loud and clear that they don’t want to be held hostage to a
day or two of sales.”

After considering customer input, the supermarket chain decided to offer discounts throughout
the holiday season instead of focusing most of its promotions during Black Friday.

Related resource:

 How Asda Built Customer Loyalty and Incorporated Customer Intelligence When
Making Key Business Decisions (customer story)

3. EA cultivates a “player culture.”

Video game giant Electronic Arts is in the middle of an impressive turnaround under the
leadership of Andrew Wilson, who took over as CEO in late 2013. As reported by Fortune, the
company’s comeback strategy revolves around player-centric moves, including cutting an online
fee that annoyed customers and offering money-back guarantees for PC games.

Changing the culture at EA also involved accepting the limitations of big data and listening to its
community of players.

“The challenge with data is you never seek to do anything profound or inspired,” Wilson told
CNET earlier this year about the company’s past struggles. “We weren’t thinking about
everything we were doing in the context of the player experience.”

A player-focused approach will continue to be critical to EA as it rolls out new player-focused

initiatives, including its recent launch of a competitive gaming division.

Related resources:

 Big Data and Beyond (ebook)

4. Shake Shack leads the “better burger” revolution.

Fast-casual newcomers are putting the pressure on traditional fast-food chains to step up their
game when it comes to food quality and customer satisfaction. Shake Shack, in particular, has
been lauded for investing in sophisticated store design, empowering its employees and listening
to customer feedback.
Company CEO Randy Garutti told Fast Company earlier this year that Shake Shack encourages
its employees to make the “charitable assumption” when dealing with customer complaints.

“We’re going to make it so that everybody who walks out [of our stores] is saying, ‘I can’t
believe what that guy did at Shake Shack,” he explains.

Related resource:

 Keeping Customers Happy (report)

5. McDonald’s starts to clean up its image…with the help of its customers.

McDonald’s is also in the middle of a turnaround—and listening to customer feedback has been
key to some early wins. The company is responding to changing customer tastes by serving only
chicken that isn’t raised with antibiotics. The fast-food chain also announced that it is offering
milk from cows not treated with an artificial growth hormone.

On the international side, the Golden Arches announced that it will be expanding its all-day
breakfast menu to the Gold Coast—a move that was informed by customer feedback.

“We are always listening and taking on feedback from our customers, and all-day breakfast was
one that people are always asking of us,” says Mark Lollback, chief marketing officer of the
company.

6. Microsoft shifts its focus to customer love.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella wants to change the culture at his company. He said that, as part
of the company’s new corporate mission, Microsoft is focusing less on things like revenue and
profit. Instead, Nadella wants to focus on “leading indicators of success” such as customer love.

“Nadella thinks that Microsoft needs to focus less on profit for profit’s sake, and more on
building stuff that people love,” reports Business Insider’s Matt Weinberger. “If people love
Microsoft products, the rest will fall into place.”

Related resource:

 The Four Tenets of Customer Love (ebook)

7. Facebook listens to users and expands a safety feature.

Shortly after the Paris terrorist attacks, Facebook activated Safety Check, a feature that lets users
tell their family and friends that they’re safe, for users around the affected area. Unfortunately, it
received some flack for offering that feature for Paris but not for Beirut, where a double suicide
bombing killed dozens of people.

The company quickly mobilized to turn on the feature more broadly.

“People are also asking why we turned on Safety Check in Paris and not other parts of the world,
where violence is more common and terrible things happen with distressing frequency,” admitted
Alex Schultz, vice president of growth at Facebook. “We will learn a lot from feedback on this
launch, and we’ll also continue to explore how we can help people show support for the things
they care about through their Facebook profiles, which we did in the case for Paris, too.”

Company CEO Mark Zuckerberg also thanked users who provided feedback, promising to “work
hard to help people suffering in as many of these situations as we can.”

Related resource:

 Winning the Tech Race: How Empowered Customers are Redefining Success in the Tech
Industry (whitepaper)

8. Soccer club AS Roma creates a fan-centric digital platform.

Before launching its new digital platform Italian soccer club AS Roma turned to the very same
people it wanted to entice: its fans. According to Fast Company, the team’s new site was shaped
by ideas and feedback from its supporters.

“I think there’s a growing disconnect between what many sports teams think fans want, or what
they think they can get away with delivering, and want sports fans actually want,” says Paul
Rogers, AS Roma’s head of digital. “This digital generation no longer wants to be passive
consumers of content. They don’t want to be broadcast to or told what they can and can’t
consume.”

He added, “Every football club has some pretty sophisticated fan-produced sites, blogs, podcasts
and social media accounts operating alongside them, and they exist because these fans saw a gap
in the market that wasn’t being serviced by the clubs themselves. We didn’t want to fall into that
trap.”

Getting fan feedback for its new digital platform is just the first step towards the team’s goal of
becoming the most digitally connected sports team in the world.

Related resource:

 How to Find and Keep Loyal Sports Fans (infographic)

 9. Univision thinks mobile-first.

Univision made serious strides in mobile innovation this year, enhancing the viewing experience
of its audience with a branded app, as well as cross-platform engagement across Facebook,
Instagram, Periscope, Snapchat, Twitter, Vine and YouTube. The company’s mobile investments
are informed by the behaviors and attitudes of its audience.

“Our Univision audience is truly mobile first,” says Mark Lopez, EVP and general manager of
Univision Digital, in an interview with The Drum. “Seventy seven percent of our audience is
mobile exclusive and they consume more videos in our apps than on desktop.”

Thinking mobile-first seems to be working for the company. Its music-based reality competition
La Banda was a ratings hit this year—thanks in part to the company’s app, which allowed users
to engage with the show throughout the season. (Watch our customer story featuring Univision
for more on how the company engages with U.S. Hispanics to deliver a better viewer
experience.)

3. CRM Definition (Customer Relationship Management)

By Susan Ward

Updated April 29, 2018

Definition: Customer Relationship Management (CRM) refers to the methodologies

and tools that aim to encompass all of a business's interactions with current, past and
future customers with the goal of "improving" customers' relationships with that
business. In other words, the goal of CRM is to gather enough information about a
customer and use it well enough to increase that customer's positive interactions with
the company, thereby increasing that company's sales.

CRM systems are collaborative; the gathering of data through all phases of the
customer relationship (marketing, sales, and service) provides a complete picture,
allowing business owners/managers to make informed decisions.

For small businesses, customer relationship management includes:

- Processes that help identify and target their best customers, generate quality sales
leads, and plan and implement marketing campaigns with clear goals and objectives

- Processes that help form individualized relationships with customers (to improve
customer satisfaction) and provide the highest level of customer service to the most
profitable customers
- Processes that provide employees with the information they need to know their
customers' wants and needs, and build relationships between the company and its
customers

Examples

FIVE EXAMPLES OF CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP

MANAGEMENT
We’ve pulled together five examples of customer relationship management made better with the
use of a sophisticated CRM tool like Microsoft Dynamics. Utilizing software to streamline,
automate, and organize all client functions will help your teams function more effectively and
concentrate more completely on their most important job—keeping the customer satisfied.

1. CRMs help by automating a consistent response whenever customer contact occurs.

That could be a simple thank you or a survey to gauge your effectiveness. This is an
excellent example of customer relationship management—it helps you keep the
conversation going. It can also help you respond more quickly to an emailed complaint
by sending an immediate response saying, “We’re on it!”
2. Business Analytics are the hottest thing since the Internet, and a CRM like Microsoft
Dynamics can spot trends before they escalate. One of our favorite examples of customer
relationship management is using a CRM to analyze customer segments experiencing a
specific product problem. A CRM can help you potentially fix the issue before it
accelerates into a company-wide problem.
3. A more specific example includes the case of Wells Fargo, a financial services
organization with more than 70 million customers. They use their CRM as a way to
connect and manage client social media responses along with improving their response
time to customer questions. Wells Fargo utilizes CRM software through the cloud to
provide the most effective customer service and streamlined efficiencies across the
enterprise.
4. CIO magazine suggests using your CRM to track customer activity throughout their
lifecycle—from prospect to existing client upsell. Tracking key behaviors from social
media posts to content click rates on an email campaign will help your
company understand what’s important to customers and what isn’t.
 5. Improving customer relationship management means having the efficiency of syncing
between mobile phones, calendars, reporting, and other client interactions. Having a
CRM that goes where you go will improve the customer experience. At the same time,
syncing data across applications will lessen duplicate work. A CRM should allow you to
move between multiple platforms while updating data in real-time.

4. Green Marketing Definition

By Susan Ward
Updated January 22, 2018

Green Marketing Definition

Green marketing refers to the process of selling products and/or services based on
their environmental benefits. Such a product or service may be environmentally friendly
in itself or produced in an environmentally

What is Green Marketing?

Green marketing is the marketing of environmentally friendly products and services. It is

becoming more popular as more people become concerned with environmental issues
and decide that they want to spend their money in a way that is kinder to the planet

Green marketing can involve a number of different things, such as creating an eco-
friendly product, using eco-friendly packaging, adopting sustainable business practices,
or focusing marketing efforts on messages that communicate a product’s green
benefits.

This type of marketing can be more expensive, but it can also be profitable due to the
increasing demand. For example, products made locally in North America tend to be
more expensive than those made overseas using cheap labor, but they have a much
smaller carbon footprint because they don’t have to fly across the globe to get here. For
some consumers and business owners, the environmental benefit outweighs the price
difference.
 5. What is need, wants and demand in marketing?

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5 Answers

Varun Khullar
Answered Aug 21, 2017 · Author has 2.9k answers and 1m answer views

Needs wants and demands are a part of basic marketing principles. Though they are 3 simple
worlds, they hold a very complex meaning behind them along with a huge differentiation factor.
In fact, A product can be differentiated on the basis of whether it satisfies a customers needs,
wants or demands. Each of them is discussed in detail in this article

Needs

Human needs are the basic requirements and include food, clothing and shelter. Without these
humans cannot survive. An extended part of needs today has become education and healthcare.
Generally, the products which fall under the needs category of products do not require a push.
Instead the customer buys it themselves. But in todays tough and competitive world, so many
brands have come up with the same offering satisfying the needs of the customer, that even the
“needs category product” has to be pushed in the customers mind.

Wants

Wants are a step ahead of needs and are largely dependent on the needs of humans themselves.
For example, you need to take a bath. But i am sure you take baths with the best soaps. Thus
Wants are not mandatory part of life. You DONT need a good smelling soap. But you will
definitely use it because it is your want. In the above image, the baby needs milk but it WANTS
candy

Example of wants category products / sectors – Hospitality industry, Electronics, Consumer

Durables etc, FMCG, etc.

Demands

You might want a BMW or a Mercedes for a car. You might want to go for a cruise. But can you
actually buy a BMW or go on a cruise? You can provided you have the ability to buy a BMW or
go on a cruise. Thus a step ahead of wants is demands.

When an individual wants something which is premium, but he also has the ability to buy it, then
these wants are converted to demands. The basic difference between wants and demands is
desire. A customer may desire something but he may not be able to fulfill his desire.

Example of demands – Cruises, BMW’s, 5 star hotels etc.

The needs wants and demands are a very important component of marketing because they help
the marketer decide the products which he needs to offer in the market. Thus the flow is like this.

Market >> Identify needs wants and demands >> Offer products to satisfy either needs wants or
demands.

6.
 7. Customer value, satisfaction and quality

Customer Value, Satisfaction and Quality:

Customer Value: The difference between the values the customer gains from owning
and using a product and the costs of obtaining the product.

e.g.
McDonald's is an well known brand for it's fast paced service. For buying McDonald's
food, customer will think about food content, and the values against the money,
effort and compare McDonald's with BurgerKing and Subway - and select the one
that gives them the greatest delivered value.

Customer Satisfaction: The extent to which a product's perceived performance

matches a buyer's expectations. Customer might be dissatisfied or satisfied.
- If the product's performance falls short of expectations, the buyer is dissatisfied.
- If performance matches or exceeds expectations, the buyer is satisfied or delighted.

Customer satisfaction depends on a product's perceived performance in delivering

value relative to a buyer's expectation. Smart companies aim to delight customers by
promising only what they can deliver, then delivering more than they promise.

e.g.
A customer of McDonald's expects quality food within short period of time after
placing their order. If they get their food in hand within their expected time then
they become satisfied. Otherwise, dissatisfied.

Total Quality Management: Programs designed to constantly improve the quality of

products, services, and marketing processes.

A company achieves total quality only when its products or services meet or exceed
customer expectations. Thus the fundamental aim of today's total quality movement
has become total customer satisfaction. Quality begins with customer needs and
ends with customer satisfaction.