Customer-Centric Approach in Marketing - Essay Example

CENTRIC APPROACH IN MARKETING al Affiliation CENTRIC APPROACH IN MARKETING For a long time, -centric models of marketing have gained popularity within the business environment. As many organizations depend on the customer behaviours, it is evidence that customers play a central role within the business environment. As organizations develop their business models, they consider the customers as a priority and all products and services are designed to suit the customer tastes and preferences. Notably, customer-centric models are business strategies that focus on increasing the number of customers for the organization as well as the loyalty they attach to their products. As the number of customers increase, organization has a chance to increase their profits. Secondly, customer-value models play an important role in understanding the consumer behaviour which helps in design desirable products. Besides, customer based models seek to detect changes in customer behaviour patterns and hence helps the organization to adjust its business strategy. On this ground, customer-centric marketing approaches are crucial if organization have to remain profitable with the contemporary business environment. Marketing strategies within an organization has generated a lot of attention within the modern business environment. Marketing seeks to create product awareness within target markets as one way to ensure that customer understand products and are attracted to the organization distribution channels (Cheng & Dogan, 2008). Therefore, marketing ensures that companies push their products towards the customers, as one way of increasing sales within the market. Today, many organizations have appreciated that a customer-centric model is one of the best marketing strategies. A customer-centric marketing model puts customers at the heart of the business and all strategies are directed towards winning the customer (Niininen, Buhalis & March, 2007). The role of a customer within the modern market has increasing generated attention. With increase is competition within the modern markets, customers are becoming important factors while designing marketing strategies. As competition increases, the profits decrease and the consumer bargaining power increases in the market. Resultantly, organizations are competing for available customers to ensure that they survive the harsh market times when customers have many options to choose from. Generally, organizations that higher customer share within the market will survive while those that lose customers will eventually collapse. As such, customer based models of marketing have gained favouritism due to increase in competition for market share. One importance of customer-centric marketing model is that increases helps to under the customer behaviour that may influence their purchasing pattern. Customer behaviour is complex factor that influence their choices and preferences within the market. One factor that contributes to complexity of customer behaviour is the uniqueness of their tastes and preferences. Customer tastes and preferences vary depending on their culture, race and even personal preferences (Hu, Chand & Evans, 2013). A customer centric model seeks to understand how such factors influence customers and the way this affects their choice of products. Understanding customer behaviour is crucial in product development. The priority of organizations is to provide products that suit customer tastes, to ensure that there is efficient flow of buyers. For instance, while customers within the Middle East countries may prefer spiced foods, customers from US market may prefer food free from such spices. Therefore, a customer-centric marketing model ensures that organizations understand the nature of customer tastes, hence positively influencing the product design. Secondly, a customer centric model helps organizations to win customer loyalty within the organization. Customer loyalty is an important aspect within an organization as it influences the ability of organizations to survive within the market in the long-term. In a competitive business environment, companies are struggling to establish lasting relationships with their customer to avoid negative impacts that would accompany loss of customers to competitors. Loyal customers contribute to optimal organization performance as they ensure that the company sales remain high even during harsh times of the market. Losing customer loyalty is expensive for organizations since it leads to heavy financial losses resulting into a business crisis (Sheth, Sisodia & Sharma, 2000). A customer centric approach to marketing detects changes within customer behaviour by constantly working hand in hand with the customers. Since the customer is close to the organization, the marketing personnel can easily detect changes within the market environment and design strategies to satisfy them. Customer theory shows that customer is loyal to organizations that consistently remain flexible to satisfy the customers. Therefore, this approach in marketing ensures that companies has loyal customer who can support the business in the face of competition. Another crucial feature of customer based brand marketing is that it supports organizations in conquering the international markets. The complexity of international market is a factor that a multinational company cannot ignore. Most companies venture in the international market to broaden its geographical coverage and to benefit from the increased number of target customers. The company has to consider diversity within the international markets as part of letting the people design their products. For instance, color preferences of automobiles vary from one person to the other and from place to place. For instance, in Africa, the majority of citizens prefer dark Mercedes models rather than silvery ones. As such, color diversity of the Mercedes brands is an important idea of making products that are appealing to the customers (Kamel, 2006). From another point of view, the size of the color is an issue that affects the customer tastes. For instance, majority of women prefer to use small cars while majority of men prefer large cars. The most crucial learning is from the UK teaching methods is that there is value in using customer based value models in designing products that satisfy the unique tastes of the customers in different market segments. Through emotional value proposition, customer centric marketing seeks to provide customers with satisfactory services. This model is aimed at providing a comfortable and conducive environment for the customers to satisfy the material as well as emotional needs (Fader, 2012). It is aimed at providing an atmosphere that allows visiting customers to relax and enjoy their services at their own pleasure. Basically, their emotional value is taken care of at no expense. For instance, couples and families will prefer to shop in a serene environment, enjoy bargaining, and relax all at the same point. This means that it is possible for a company to differentiate itself from the competition by adopting this type of value proposition (Randall & Seth, 1999). Organizations such as Walmart has used customer value marketing models by providing the best shopping experience as part of their marketing model. Their aim is to provide an experience that lasts for their customer to ensure that there are yearning to visit the shops at all times. Therefore, customer-centered marketing is the best approach to satisfy customers both materially and emotionally. In an era of business technology, marketing models must pay attention to customer feedback within the online environment. The organization needs not only to advertise their products but also find ways of using the feedback that they obtain from the customers. Filtering of information is crucial as social media provide people with the liberty to express both negative and positive opinions on the products (Chand, Cummings & Patel, 2012). To use the feedback appropriately, the organizational managers have to evaluate the economic impact of the social media taking into account of the opinions provided in this platform. The economic value of social media will only be realized if organization use a customer based marketing approach to create two way communications within their online presence (Cheng & Dogan, 2008). For instance, platforms such as Facebook allow customers to comment about products, a source of feedback that marketers can use to understand the customer behavior. Through customer oriented marketing, companies such as Apple Inc. have benefited by engaging their customers in dialogues that contribute to organizational value. Therefore, this marketing approach helps to overcome the challenges that have faced organizations during an era of technology proliferation. In conclusion, customer based marketing model has become an important tool for pushing products towards the customers. In an era of increased business competition and market complexity, organizations are faced by the challenge of attracting more customers as well as winning the loyalty of those they have. The numbers of customers that purchase from an organization have a direct impact on the organizations profitability. Customer-centric marketing seeks to identify customer tastes and preferences, as part of the strategy of modeling quality products that much the needs of the market. Besides, the customer oriented marketing helps to conquer external factors such as culture and technology that often pose a great danger to product sales. Companies that focus on the customers are able to satisfy their needs more efficiently and hence enjoy a higher flow of the customers. Therefore, such companies are guaranteed to survive in the short as well as long-term, which is essential for organizational viability. Additionally, such organizations are able to adjust the changing market trends, which keep them at the top of the industry. Since this model has worked for world top companies such as Walmart and Cisco, it is recommendable marketing approach for other organizations. 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