My last blog was about customer focus and while thinking about customer centricity I talked about customer focus in terms of 3Cs from organizations perspective, i.e defining the customer, calculating the customer value and then building the value over time through customer relations. But these strategic customer imperatives from ESOs (Environmental Serving Organization) or let's just say a profit seeking organization's perspective, miss out a critical detail, the customer's point of view. While the company can think all it wants in terms of customer focus, customers rarely mirror the company's point of view. Customers; we, you, I, us, they, all have their own agendas, driven by myriad of factors as we go on our merry journey to acquire whatever we wish to acquire. There were times when the discovery to transaction the journey was tough for the customer since the information asymmetry favored vendors. The information transparency has tilted the balance in favor of the consumer and no matter how customer focussed the organization is, the ultimate choice in marketplace lies with the customer. You can sway and bend the choice but you can't own it, unless you are a monopoly (a case we will leave for regulators to solve and ignore in our discussion). Our aim serves a more down to earth purpose, to define the 4th C in the customer focus as the "Customer's" focus.
We will need to find our way in a heap of information to prove a very simple customer choice model, almost too simple to be true, yet boldly we will venture into the complex, seeking the simple. The study of choice will take us into mathematics, statistics, econometrics, political science, computational social sciences, psychology and its cousin behavioral economics to name a few. With the aspiration to develop a simpler customer choice model, we will need to boil the choice theory, decision theory, expected value theory, prospect theory, and maybe some other theories, into something that is relatable and practical for everyone in the organization to understand. The ocean of knowledge that surrounds the human choice and the factors that effect it, leaves the sanity of such an ambition for this blog, a bit questionable and this is where I have to put forth the slight caveat for readers benefit (as most my blogs do) that this blog, afterall, is my diary and a means to synthesize my thoughts and any synthesis of information hereof should be taken only as an encouragement of further inquiry in to the matter.
So lets jump in and start our line of investigation by assuming a simple hypothetical customer choice model of our own design and say the customer choice depends on three basic tenants:
1. The concept of price
2. The concept of ease
3. The concept of security
Keeping the above pillars in mind I will divide my study of sorts into two diggings:
1. Quantifiable Utility
2. UnQuantifiable Utility.
Or we can also examine in terms of
1. Subjective utility
2. Objective utility.
I know all this theoretical mayhem sounds archaic and professorial but we will touch upon some very current mechanisms that effect customer choice, from personalization, digitization, branding to the role of big data, AI & machine learning in bringing the classical theories to new life.
We are not trying to justify any of the above constructs, we just want to take our thirst to the existing reservoir of understanding and borrow a little of perspective from each cup we draw to stitch our story and see if the resulting mosaic leaves an impression of sensibility.....
We will need to find our way in a heap of information to prove a very simple customer choice model, almost too simple to be true, yet boldly we will venture into the complex, seeking the simple. The study of choice will take us into mathematics, statistics, econometrics, political science, computational social sciences, psychology and its cousin behavioral economics to name a few. With the aspiration to develop a simpler customer choice model, we will need to boil the choice theory, decision theory, expected value theory, prospect theory, and maybe some other theories, into something that is relatable and practical for everyone in the organization to understand. The ocean of knowledge that surrounds the human choice and the factors that effect it, leaves the sanity of such an ambition for this blog, a bit questionable and this is where I have to put forth the slight caveat for readers benefit (as most my blogs do) that this blog, afterall, is my diary and a means to synthesize my thoughts and any synthesis of information hereof should be taken only as an encouragement of further inquiry in to the matter.
So lets jump in and start our line of investigation by assuming a simple hypothetical customer choice model of our own design and say the customer choice depends on three basic tenants:
1. The concept of price
2. The concept of ease
3. The concept of security
Keeping the above pillars in mind I will divide my study of sorts into two diggings:
1. Quantifiable Utility
2. UnQuantifiable Utility.
Or we can also examine in terms of
1. Subjective utility
2. Objective utility.
I know all this theoretical mayhem sounds archaic and professorial but we will touch upon some very current mechanisms that effect customer choice, from personalization, digitization, branding to the role of big data, AI & machine learning in bringing the classical theories to new life.
We are not trying to justify any of the above constructs, we just want to take our thirst to the existing reservoir of understanding and borrow a little of perspective from each cup we draw to stitch our story and see if the resulting mosaic leaves an impression of sensibility.....
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