Kudos to Australians Kristin Hickey and Derek Leddie of The Leading Edge and David Jenkinson of Fosters Group for their ESOMAR award winning paper, “The Heart Transplant — Customers at the Heart of Your Business.” The authors liken marketing’s obsession with brands to a worn-out, struggling heart and suggest that a customer-centric focus offers the equivalent of a heart transplant.
In an interview with Jesse Blackadder, editor of “Research News,” Kristin said managers see consumer-centricity as a source of sustainable comeptitive advantage for three reasons:
1. It allows an organization to get closer to the customer, increasing the relevance of innovation, communications and other marketing.
2. It provides ane lement of consistent objectivity in the business. There are fewer push-and-pull struggeles between departments based on opinions of differing priorities. The Customer insight and advice provides incontestable direction.
3. Customer-centricity can be a source of bargaining power with trade or retailers.
The paper shows Foster’s journey from being brand centric to customer centric, explores the six barriers to adopting a customer centric vision in an organization, and suggests a five step process for leading a customer-centric revolution.
“Business are already increasing their expenditure on consumer insights, which is creating buoyancy in the research industry,” said Kristin. “However, on closer inspection this buoyancy should be a significant cause for concern. Our industry holds itself up as the expert in the field of consumer insights. Yet to date we have failed to provide strong, compelling leaderhip for businesses searching for consumer-centricity.”
An interesting note: to become customer-centric Fosters took customer insights out of market research and created a new organization which is part of the senior leaderships team, working closely with the CEO and senior business strategists.
