Title: Building a customer-focused culture in organisations: developing 7Cs model

Authors: Pankaj M. Madhani

Addresses: ICFAI Business School (IBS), IBS House, Opp. AUDA Lake, Science City Road, Off. S.G. Road, Ahmedabad - 380 060, India

Abstract: In the current scenario of highly competitive market, developing a strong relationship with customers is vital in achieving the sustainable business performance. To be successfully focused on customers, organisations must ensure a high level of consensus and cohesiveness around the belief that their existence relies on being responsive to the needs of its customers. Organisations can truly embrace customer focus only if they embed it as a culture throughout their organisations. This research has emphasised significance of market orientation as well as strategic capability in inculcating customer-focused culture. To build customer-focused culture, organisations need to deploy market orientation executed with strategic capability. The research has developed 7Cs model to facilitate building of customer-focused culture in organisations. A strong customer-focused culture exhibits high ratings on all 7Cs: customer insight, competitor awareness, collaborative approach, criteria for decision making, compensation strategy, CEO leadership and customer value creation. The research also builds various frameworks and empirically establishes relationship between enterprise value and customer-focused culture in organisation.

Keywords: customer focus; market orientation; strategic capability; customer-focused culture; customer life-time value; CLV; business performance; enterprise value competitive advantages; 7Cs.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBEX.2018.094705

International Journal of Business Excellence, 2018 Vol.16 No.2, pp.199 - 232

Received: 04 Apr 2017
Accepted: 03 Aug 2017
Published online: 12 Sep 2018 *

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