Each company in the market survives by focusing on customer needs and delivering goods and service to this customer. Many companies in Lebanon have a person focus or market orientation. There are numerous ways for this. The most important one is the customer driven approach
In the customer driven approach, customer need is the drive of most tactical marketing decisions. The business will not pursue a strategy until it goes by the test of consumer research. The starting place is always the consumer. The company thinks that there is you don't need to purchase research and development for products that customers won't buy. Those systems are basically the four P's (Product, Price, Place and Advertising). If any of those four P's had a problem, the business could be in trouble and the consumer demand will decrease.
TABLE 2. 1 the 4 P's of MarketingMarketing-Mix. png
Source: This stand is extracted from the Marketing mixture, Management notes, 2010
Most companies spend their resources on customer orientation. It helps them to understand customer needs and give attention to marketing strategies. In this manner, customer satisfaction will increase and the performance of the business will eventually increase. This path is a couple of activities that companies use for aiding beliefs in sales that allow considering customer's needs as the major concern of the company. (Mintzberg, 1996)
Most of owner markets are changing themselves to be buyer markets. This can lead to the amelioration of customer-focused activities on production-focused markets. As a result, everyday's products demand increase as well as the benefits on individual goods and materials.
In order to classify the size of customer-oriented products and services it is important to label adequate variables (Lampel and Mintzberg, 1996). Reichwald and Dietel focus on production in the customer oriented strategies. They differentiate the issue and the inconsistency of responsibilities in the creation agenda. (Reichwald and Dietel, 1991).
Pine et al. (1993) use the variation rate of products to distinguish between consistent and tailored products. (Pine et al, 1993) However, the success in customer orientation will be awarded in adaptation of customer's must products and/or services. Therefore it is important to gauge the personalization from the view of the customers. At this time we need parameters that summarize the customer's felt adaptation. The right parameter is the amount of personality. It represents the orientation of the result to a customer's specific need corresponding to his personal situation. The personality arises with the individual content or value of any result. (Pine et al, 1993)
The relationship between your individuality associated with an productivity and customer's need shows only one feature of any production because different ones can have different degrees of individuality. A lot more than that, a person would like to concentrate on various features in order to find a tailored service or product. The features express all parts (e. g. product features, price, and color) of the end result which are a notable difference to a certain customer. With this view, yet another parameter must be established: the degree of complexity. Complexity shows the end result from a multi-layered source. It identifies the variety of different features associated with an productivity. (How useful is the concept of the customer-oriented bureaucracy for understanding the management and experience of retail work, Lancaster, 1971)
2. 1. 1- Producing customer orientation strategy
A customer orientation insurance plan is the procedure a business concentrates its product or service on customers. In wide, there are 3 ways that can adapt something to consumers: Aiming at price very sensitive customers, aiming at quality delicate customers and aiming at niche customers. (Wendell Clark, 1999)
2. 1. 2- Price sensitive orientation
This orientation will involve targeting consumers who give attention to the price. This orients the business towards anyone who is price delicate or a large market segment. For this strategy to succeed, the company must be productive with the lowest possible overhead. This will likely imply having low costs and therefore, company will be able to sell at lower prices or make savings compared to competitors. This strategy may help the business gain a bigger market show and target a wider range of customers. (Wendell Clark, 1999)
2. 1. 3- Quality sensitive orientation
This orientation allows the business to be perfectly known on the market as the best company on a non - price basis. This will likely bring about becoming the most accepted by customers. Therefore, the product or service must have an extra value and the company can demand an increased price for this value. When quality is known as more important than price, this company will become the leader on the market. (Wendell Clark, 1999)
2. 1. 4- Market strategy
This strategy has an extremely skinny customer orientation. It requires finding a small audience and aiming a specific product at that audience. The merchandise might not be the best or the cheapest but it's the one that will fit the needs of this audience. This plan can be achieved through customization. This is when the company makes a certain product and after knowing the needs of a certain customers, new features can be added to the product to best suit the needs of this consumer. (Wendell Clark, 1999)
2. 1. 5- Developing a successful customer focused strategy
A successful plan includes the below:
Customer driven quality: company uses ideas that lead to client satisfaction.
Leadership: Professionals in the business need to find between the employees or their subordinates who are customer focused. Professionals should play the role of taking care of and sustaining techniques that donate to increasing these values.
Continuous improvement: the business should commit to a continuing improvement by optimizing worker performance and improve goods and services for a better quality.
Immediate response: faster replies should get to customers by lowering product launch cycles.
Full participation: The business should adopt and encourage and recognition system to encourage the involvement of employees in customer management.
Long run prospect: the company should plan procedures and source allocation that reveal long term dedication to customers, suppliers and employees. It will regularly asses the jobs and reviews them to be able to optimize the task load.
Using facts only: Bank account managers and executives should use facts and real data to demonstrate current position of client satisfaction.
Public responsibility: The business enterprise should tackle public concerns and hobbies such as lessening the result of product squander on the surroundings.
A high quality quest statement should be shown by the anticipations of customers. The operating idea of organizations is to recognize customer's needs and then offer a service or product to satisfy this need somewhat than creating a product and striving to identify the market. The following claims can be applied and important in developing a mission affirmation.
Do not offer me things
Do not offer me clothes, offer me attractive looks
Do not offer me a house, offer me security and a good place
Do not offer me books, offer me the benefits associated with knowledge
Do not offer me records; offer me leisure and the sound of music. (Strategic Management reserve, 2009)
A major reason for developing the quest of the business enterprise is to appeal to customers that give a interpretation to the business. The client himself is ready to pay for a good or service and for that reason determines what a business is, what it produces and whether it'll prosper. (Customer orientation checklist, quality software, 2010)
In 1950s, the demand for customer orientation rose in the field of marketing. Total quality management is also targeted at customer orientation and business reengineering is a radical reshaping of business processes to raised suit the needs of the client. As mentioned by Jeschke in 1992, satisfied customers continue to be loyal to the organization; therefore, the normal aim of those efforts is client satisfaction.
Most companies nowadays know about the importance of customer management. Many companies are building customer data source, arrange for customer feedback programs in addition to employing customer focused employees. Companies like L. L Bean, USAA and MBNA have built long lasting relationships with the valuable customers. Just what exactly does it suggest to be customer oriented?
Companies concentrate on their customers rather than their products and control their relationships with those rather than perform discrete ventures. They seek to provide their customers with products and services customized for his or her own needs. Their success is assessed by their share of customer loyalty but not their market talk about.
Customer focused companies that accelerate their product figures see similarities at your competition level. Therefore, they are determined to treat their customers in another way and create exceptional customer value.
As an example, and in 15 years, MBNA, the credit card company in Delaware, USA, became the second largest lender through loan provider credit cards with more than 35 billion us dollars loans. The clients began to use the credit card more often, spent more sums and carry higher amounts. Therefore, MBNA market talk about increased. This company selects its customers by targeting associations and colleges and tailoring its product to suit their need. In addition, it has an in depth customer data source to be used for promotions and to predict defectors.
Customer orientation is challenging to put into action and many companies think it is very difficult to get it right. Customer focused companies show two qualities. First, it is influenced from the very best, where the head promotes the methodology. Second, the success of the execution comes from the effective integration of the culture and strategies. The primary companies begin by creating successful customer ways of reach their business goals and teach their first line employees to fulfill customers whatsoever levels. Leading companies focus on their most valuable customers and portion them depending on their needs. They focus their attempts on differentiation strategies and value proposition. (Jeschke, 1992)
The differentiation strategy concentrates on how the company will leverage its advantages, customer relationship and market position in order to attract and keep customers. For the worthiness proposition, it's the way the company will reveal economical value.
In order to formulate a value proposition, the business must ask: What behaviors does indeed the company seek from its customers? How much value will be resulted from this behavior? And exactly how does the corporation share its beliefs using its customers to inspire them to act in the required way?
As an example, Basic Electric White Goods developed a reward program for its appliance dealers to pay back three desired behaviours: symbolize all the General Electric product line, guarantee 50% of sales and offer payments on time. In return, General Electric provides evening deliveries right from its warehouse and provides the best price regardless of the order size or variety. As a result, subscriber's amounts increased.
Many companies that adopt a customer driven approach do well on the power of these execution. Exclusively, the strategy will not differentiate one company from another but the execution of the strategy.
Many companies seek the point of view of the customers and make sure that those customers stay devoted and are satisfied with the company's offerings. Leaders of those companies assess their success by the amount of interactions between themselves and their customers. They always seek having information on the customer's experience and assess their performance.
Many leading companies ensure that they place the right people on the right job in order to connect to the clients. Those employees are well trained, determined and organized to gratify customer's needs at user interface.
What differentiates customer influenced companies from each other's is the attitude and habit of its employees. Companies discuss this culture by taking care of their staff's attitude and patterns. They make sure that those employees show a sincere aspire to help customers, pursue quality and own customers problems in order to resolve them as their own.
A successful execution of customer orientation requires changes available and exactly how companies maintain its business. Companies should align their strategies and culture with the client needs and highlight consistent action and a interest to dealing with customers.
Organizations should bottom their beliefs on comments from customers, entail the employees in the creation of values, like the values to their brand, encourage the staff to align their behavior to the prices of the business and then prize them.
Steps to creating a remarkable customer focused company:
Commit to building a company that will be known because of its customer service
Choose personnel that is focused on customer support and is convinced in the business's vision
Think of the procedures from the customer's point of view
Have continuous personnel development and process improvement
Have customer centered employees and a system in place then watch the magic happening.
FIGURE 2. 1 Traditional Corporation vs. modern customer focused organization
Modern customer focused organizational graph Modern Customer focused organizational chart
Source: This figure is extracted from web images, customer orientation.
2. 2- Learning orientation system
In the recent years, many experts have emphasized the need for companies to be more competitive, try new organizational structures, new process and many marketing strategies. They have to learn from their success and failures.
Many firms would like to improve their performance and make an effort to be learning organizations where managers and staff create a profound acceptance of business activities and constantly improve their skills to raised respond to the quickly changing competitive environment. (Weitzby, 1993)
Sales managers can enhance their sales force performance by motivating the sales force to learn about the product, the clients, the market and the advertising strategies. Deal employees with a learning orientation could work intelligently by assessing the suitability of different sales techniques and taking part in a variety of reselling activities. Sales professionals should encourage their team to review customers and develop new solutions for dealing with them. When salespeople are equipped with market data and involved with trainings, managers can show pursuits in learning among their sales team.
More than that, if the advertising experience is pleasurable, sales representatives will have a desire to learn and increase job satisfaction as well as production. One of the most important competitive advantages is the power of the team to learn faster than the competitor (DeGeus, 1988).
Learning orientation is the experience of creating and using knowledge to set-up competitive advantage. This involves obtaining information about customer needs, market changes and development of new solutions to create new products that become more superior to the competitor. Learning orientation identifies what kind of information is obtained and how it is examined and distributed.
TABLE 2. 2 Definitions of Organizational learning (Marketing bulletin, 1999)
Fiol & Lyles (1985)
"the procedure of improving actions through better knowledge and understanding"
Levitt & March (1988)
"organizations have emerged as learning by encoding inferences from history into regimens that guide tendencies"
Stata (1992)
"Organizational learning occurs through shared insights, knowledge and mental models. . . and builds on past knowledge and experience"
Huber (1991)
"an entity learns if, through its control of information, the number of its potential behaviors is modified"
Garvin (1993)
"A business skilled at creating, acquiring, and moving knowledge, and at modifying its tendencies to indicate new knowledge and insights"
Source: Table extracted from the Marketing Bulletin, 1999, 10, 38-51, Article 4
Page 2 of 14
2. 2. 1- Dedication to learning
Commitment to learning is defined as how much the business promotes and values learning. The corporation considers learning as a very important investment to be able to survive. Commitment to learning is associated with a permanent planned orientation. Managers in devoted companies expect their employees to work with their time for you to pursue knowledge beyond your scope of the work. If this company doesn't encourage growth of knowledge, personnel will never be motivated for more information. (Marketing Science institute, learning orientation, 1994)
2. 2. 2- Shared vision
Shared vision identifies an organization's give attention to learning. Learning is less likely to be important to the organization's associates if there is no shared eye-sight. They find it difficult to really know what to learn even if they are motivated. A positive learning environment requires the organization to concentrate on the execution of a fresh knowledge.
After the researches made by Brown in 1980, he uncovered that various departments are different in their way of interpreting knowledge. That's why; people from different useful areas distinguish advancement in diverse ways. (Brown, 1980)
2. 2. 3- Intra-organizational knowledge sharing
Intra-organizational knowledge showing refers to collective beliefs related to the widening of learning between different departments inside the business. The information compiled is held for future references. Learning in an organization is the result of the build up of specific learning. Sharing the knowledge inside the organization is very important to prevent the increased loss of information after employee turnover or copy. The organization must have a competent system to reexamine the information and its framework. (Industrial Marketing Management, research direct, Roger Calantone, 2001)
FIGURE 2. 2 Organizational learning (extracted from Phrase press, 2009)
screenshot-1. gif
Source: This body is extracted from expression press, 2009
FIGURE 2. 3 Learning orientation system (extracted from research direct)
1-s2_0-S0019850101002036-gr1. gif
Source: The shape is extracted from Knowledge immediate, Learning orientation
Learning orientation are available inside employees who value learning new skills and want to increase their ability and competence (Deshon, 2005). In difficult situations, the employees who are learning oriented respond more to situations and can solve them better than others. Those employees always seek to find new ways to solve all challenging problems, that's why, their occurrence inside organization is very critical to its success. (Deshon, 2005)
In 1991, Huber talked about a cultural perspective when he offered a classification of learning orientation as the introduction of new knowledge that can impact the behavior through existing ideals and values inside the culture of the company. We can start to see the presence of the learning orientation when action is considered after the development of a fresh knowledge. (Huber, 1991)
Innovating and adapting is vital and companies can change fast if indeed they can learn fast. Therefore, learning has been always a problem in changing competitive environment. High level of innovation is situated in companies that point out both learning and development.
A learning organization is a company that regularly transforms itself by allowing its participants to learn more. It always looks for to work in parallel with the growing market and stay competitive in the business. Employees should be devoted, work hard and become more like a community.
Usually, when companies increase, employees get accustomed to work in a certain way and overlook learning. That's when only a brief term solution is available to appearing problems. Because of this, many companies preferred to downsize and only keep the dedicated employees who work more effectively in order to make a more competitive advantages by learning faster than opponents and growing such a culture. Companies need to comprehend the proceedings around them in the outside environment, maintain their product and process knowledge and then generate solutions using what they have learned. To carry out that, people should cooperate along, connect and mainly share a culture of trust. (Huber, 1991)
According to Peter Senge (1994), a learning corporation has five main characteristics: systems thinking, personal mastery, mental models, a distributed vision and team learning.
Systems considering: This is where people study the business enterprise as bounded subject. Companies utilize this thinking method when they want to assess the company and evaluate its performance. Systems' thinking is when all the characteristics of the business should be clear and state that it's a learning group. If any is lacking, the organization will not reach its goal.
Personal mastery: Is the dedication of the individuals to learning. Which learning is attained from training and development. Due to learning, employees should copy what they have learned to the concerned parties or co-workers in order to be aligned.
Mental models: Are assumptions kept by individuals or companies. Those models must be challenged in order to become a learning corporation. Employees place ideas that they plan to follow or use the existing ones that happen to be what they actually do. Same for companies that protect norms, ideals and memories. In order to be more learning focused, attitudes have to be substituted with an open culture of trust. In order to reach this, the company should have organizational assessment methods for the theories of action and for that reason, discard unwanted ideals.
Shared eye-sight: it motivates the employees and provides them the vitality for more information. Furthermore, it ought to be accompanied by long term organizational goals.
Team Learning: one of the benefits associated with possessing a team learning a similar thing is that they increase quicker and their problem handling is improved because they are equipped with the required knowledge. Employees should take part in dialogues and have an wide open communication and a mutual understanding.
Benefits of the learning organization:
Remaining competitive and creating a good level of innovation
Sharing a good place when responding to external pressures
Have the suitable knowledge that satisfies customer needs
Improve quality
Become people focused and enhance the image of the company
Increase the rate of change inside the company
Resistance to learning can continually be found in the business if employees did not choose the idea in the first place and are fully focused on learning. They feel that the change will make them loose or they feel threatened. Their mind is usually close and they're not happy to participate in mental models. (Senge, 1994)
Learning is seen as restricted to senior levels if it's not carried out coherently across the company. That's when learning is not considered as a shared perspective.
When the amount of employees is very high (more than 150 staff), sharing the training information can be very hard because of the size and complexity of the business structure, weak staff relationships, low trust between acquaintances and low communication.
"The Dance of Change" reserve includes reasons why companies find problems in changing itself to a learning company. The primary problem is that management and employees don't have the sufficient time to improve their own culture as they are busy with their daily operations and issues. They have to know that they must give using their company amount of time in order to attain the desired results. And if indeed they fail to do it, a coach or a instructor will be necessary and mandatory to help them plan their time and plan.
