What does it mean to be customer-centric? We identify seven disciplines that reflect what customer-centric businesses do and how they embed these disciplines into their culture. We show how the seven disciplines lead to superior performance. Here’s how the level of customer centricity of an organization, business unit, function or team can be measured and benchmarked.

“Good companies will meet needs; great companies will create markets.” – Philip Kotler¹

The discipline of modern marketing, first espoused by Philip Kotler, is centered on the philosophy that marketing’s primary role is to create value that will satisfy current and future customer needs profitably. He also endorses the definition that says: “Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.” (American Marketing Association, 2013).²

This market-oriented philosophy was first practiced in large businesses by Proctor & Gamble (P&G) through development of product management and brand management organizational structures. The product manager was responsible for leading his or her brand profitably by influencing all parts of the organization to create and deliver products that satisfied customer needs at prices that consumers were prepared to pay.

While many other fast-moving-consumer products companies followed P&G’s lead, it seems the majority in business-to-business industries and in service businesses did not.

Since the 1990s, marketing academics have explored the rationale of the “marketing concept” more closely as it became clear that many organizations were not implementing it and remained “product” or “sales” focused” in the way in which they thought about and conducted their businesses.

Narver and Slater (1990, 1998)³ were pioneers in researching the effect of market orientation on business profitability and providing an initial framework for its implementation. Slater and Narver (1994, 1995) also studied how the competitive environment affected the market orientation­ performance relationship and the relevance of a “learning” organization to effective market orientation.

Many other researchers focused on the market orientation-performance relationship in different contexts.⁴   Appiah-Adu researched differences between large and small businesses as well as conducting empirical tests in a transition economy (1997, 1998)⁵. Avlonitis and Gounaris (1997)⁶ compared the market orientation-performance relationship between industrial and consumer goods companies. Similar empirical studies were made in service industries (see Chang and Chen, 1998)⁷, in nonprofit service providers (Kara, Spillan, and DeShields, 2004)⁸ and in university business schools (Hammond, Webster and Harmon, 2006)⁹.

These systematic studies and others provide convincing evidence that there is a strong positive relationship between market orientation and organizational performance.

The importance of market orientation as a corporate culture was highlighted in an empirical study by Homberg and Pflesser (2000)¹⁰ and the relevance of a culture that focused on customers and considered competitors (Homberg, Grozdanoivc and Klarmann, 2007)¹¹. The relationship between corporate culture, market orientation and innovativeness in Japanese firms was explored by Deshpande, Farley and Webster (1993)¹². This work addressed the culture measurement issues and performance outcomes and provided a framework for measurement.

A large amount of research has also been conducted to define and measure the relationships between organizational culture and performance – see for example Kotter and Heskett, 1992¹³, Ogbonna and Harris, 2000¹⁴ and Berson, Oreg and Dvir, 2005¹⁵.

These studies, as well as observation by practitioners, led us to conclude that corporate culture is a decisive driver of business performance.

The Changing Global and Local Business Environment

We all have a sense of what is happening today. It is a time of unprecedented change. Large multi-national businesses as well as nationally based organizations have become more complex as they service many markets and customer segments with an increasing variety of products and services. The pace of change and technological disruption is requiring most organizations to review their product lines and services and develop new ones and in many instances change their operating models- that is, the way in which they organize themselves to create and deliver new forms of value to their customers. Those that have not been able to respond, such as Kodak and Borders book stores, no longer exist. Others such as Nokia, have been acquired.

Social media has sparked revolutions and enabled communities and consumers to mobilize themselves and demand change. These new forms of virtually instant communications to literally millions of people make governments as well as corporations much more transparent. A company’s culture and its willingness to respond to customer demands and poor customer experiences is now transparent for everyone to see.

Yet, many organizations have not responded effectively and have not transformed their organizations to a customer focus. Reports by the Forrester research group consistently reveal the disconnect between companies that believe they are customer focused and the perception of their customers.¹⁶ Our experience with many organizations across the world supports this view. While most senior corporate leaders intuitively agree that a customer focus is important to future business performance, they do not fully understand he critical requirement of a customer focused culture. To effectively survive and prosper in today’s environment, most organizations must have a customer culture. We maintain that this is imperative to creating sustainable growth and profitability.

What is a Customer Culture?

“ I came to see, in my time at IBM, that culture isn’t just one aspect of the game – it is the game. In the end an organization is nothing more than the collective capacity of its people to create value.” Lou Gerstner, former CEO of IBM¹⁷

We conducted our own research to find out why so many organizations are not customer focused. We found that when we asked leaders in companies if they were customer focused, most said “yes, of course, it is in our vision”. When we asked what they meant by customer focus and how did it apply in their organizations we received many different answers – good customer service well targeted offers to market segments, quick handling of customer complaints. It was clear that different people in the same organizations and across businesses had a different view as to what customer focus means. There was a clear need to be able to define it and make it tangible¹⁸.

First, we must distinguish between customer focus and customer culture. The term customer focus means different things to different people. It ranges in its meaning from “good customer service” across a spectrum to “ensuring that the whole organization, and not just frontline service staff puts its customers first” – meaning understanding customers’ needs and doing what is right for the customer. In this last meaning, every department and every employee should share the same customer-focused vision. For this to occur an organization must have a culture based on the belief that what’s best for the customer is best for the business. It is this meaning of customer focus we call customer culture in fact, we maintain that to have real customer focus you must have a customer culture.

Toyota embodies this thinking and has developed customer culture practices over many years. In its Lexus division it places great emphasis on having all staff focus on the customer’s journey. This was highlighted on the rare occasions in Europe when families travelling in the French Alps were stranded due to mechanical breakdown. Lexus arranged to collect them by helicopter to take them to their destination, understanding that it is not about the car, but it is about getting its customers to where they planned to be. As one insider said: “yes, of course we will fix the car, but our first priority is to ensure our customers get to their destination safely and on time.”

Second, customer culture needs to be embedded in people and teams through orientation and induction, leadership, processes, rewards, key performance measures, a common language, and an expected way of doing things. What’s more, customer culture is a discipline-a shared set of behaviors and skills that can be developed, refined, and practiced to become habits that lead to better personal and business results.

Third, customer culture does not mean that a company responds to any and every request for improvements or new products and services that any and all customers say they want. This is usually impractical and unprofitable and does not allow the firm to focus on the customers it can best serve with superior value. Every business must have a clear strategy, value proposition, and target customers whose needs are understood and for whom superior value and experience are delivered. A strong customer culture is one that is clearly aligned to the company’s strategy and all managers and staff understand and respond to the current and future needs of targeted customers. It includes the discipline and skills to know when particular customers’ needs can’ t be met by the business and can better be served by competitors and to help customers to find a solution elsewhere. A customer culture is one in which people in a business interact with both customers and noncustomers in a way that shows they care-either by solving the customers’ problem or by referring noncustomers to other companies that can meet their needs better.

Customer culture embodies shared values across the entire business that translates into behaviors in all functions that are aligned and committed to creating superior value for customers in a profitable way. A strong customer culture delivers a customer experience that is consistently excellent along the whole service chain. The ultimate aim is to have the customers make your business the center for everything they do for your particular offering. Then your customers will be advocates of your business and your products and services. You can’t get to the ultimate unless you build the right culture – a customer culture.

How Can We Make Customer Culture Tangible?

Our research program was built on the prior work of empirical studies by market orientation academics and corporate culture researchers. Our study was built on the premise, supported by convincing evidence, that a strong customer culture drives positive future business performance. We set out to measure customer culture by staff behaviors with respect to customers – often described as, “What we do around here.”

Figure 1 depicts customer-centric behaviors as the foundation for creating positive customer experiences that, in turn, provide customer satisfaction, loyalty and advocacy. These together drive sustainable revenue growth, profitability and new product/service success. In our research we wanted to identify the tangible customer culture factors and their links to business results. We researched more than 100 companies and conducted quantitative and qualitative analysis to identify valid links”.

Figure 1: Customer Centric Behaviors Drive Customer Experience, Loyalty and Profitability Growth

Our study found seven critical cultural traits of customer culture. These determine if a business can create customer advocates and win in the marketplace. They expose the risks that a company’s capabilities will not support its strategy. The names we have given these seven traits and their associated behavior summaries are given in Figure 2.

Figure 2: The Seven Customer Culture Traits

These traits also have a decisive impact on sales growth, profit growth, profitability, customer satisfaction, new-product success, and innovation. Figure 3 shows each trait as a driver of particular business performance outcomes. These customer culture traits predict better, sustainable business results. Each trait drives predictable and measurable improvements in sales, profitability, and new-product or new-service success.

Figure 3: Customer Culture Drivers of Business Outcomes

We came to realize that customer culture is a discipline-a set of behaviors and skills that can be developed, refined, and practiced to become habits that lead to better personal and business results.

Also, we found that the disciplines are linked with different strategic focuses that drive specific performance outcomes. These are summarized in Figure 4.

We now describe each of the seven disciplines that reflect a strong customer culture.

Figure 4: Customer Culture and Strategy

The Seven Disciplines of Customer Culture²⁰

1. The Customer Insight Discipline

For most companies this is at the heart of their strategies. Think about the many ways customers interact with your business every day. Every one of those interactions presents an opportunity for your staff members to demonstrate their understanding of the customer’s environment. Whether it is as simple as respecting a retail customer’s time by offering a callback option to resolve a problem or as complex as managing the expectations of enterprise customers by implementing leading-edge technology. All staff behavior is driven by your culture and the expectations placed on everyone to know his or her customers and treat them in a certain way. The questions you should ask include:

Does the company understand its current cus­tomers’ needs? Does it know how satisfied or dissatisfied they are with its products or services? Does it act on this knowledge? Does it commu­nicate to customers its actions resulting from their feedback?

When Westpac, a large Australian bank, decided to look for insights about why customers were leaving them and going to competitors, they asked the question “why” of both “lost” customers and loyal customers. They found that customers who left Westpac did so because they did not have a relationship with anyone in the bank. They simply thought of Westpac as a big bank. And they said: “we hate the bank”. Those customers who were loyal had an ongoing personal relationship with a banker and said: “we love our banker”. Westpac took this insight and decided to decentralize decisions back to the bank branches so that bank managers and loans staff could make quick decisions and provide advice for customers and develop close relationships with them. As a result customer retention increased.

2. The Customer Foresight Discipline

This second customer discipline relates to a company’s ability to obtain new customers profitably and anticipate future needs. Your company’s ability to attract new customers is based on its customer foresight and its willingness and ability to embrace new ways of providing service. Will it lead the market by launching new services before customers recognize their own changing needs? The questions you should ask include:

Does the company gather information on potential customers? Does it target them based on its opportunity for competitive advantage? Does it understand and invest in meeting future needs of prospective customers? Does it understand and act on needs that customers’ can’t express?

Starbucks coffee shops have built their reputation, in the US and around the world, by developing personal relationships with their customers so that they know them as individuals. But one of their keys to success has been to engage customers directly in helping them improve their services and provide innovative ideas that will lead to new products and services that will satisfy their future needs. As a result Starbucks has redefined the customer retail experience for its customers and introduced Mobile order and pay for consumers.

3. The Competitor Insight Discipline

Your company’s understanding of its customers’ alternatives is crucial to its ability to compete.

Competitor insight is reflected in workforce behaviors and prevalent activities that give the company a deep and dynamic understanding of its current competitors. Without these strong drivers, the company cannot stay in touch with its competitors’ strategies and is in danger of losing market share and profitability. The questions you should ask include:

Does the company monitor. understand, and respond to its competitors’ strengths and weak­ nesses? Does it factor competitors’ current strate­gies into its own strategies? Do staff members understand how they contribute to the firm’s cur­rent value proposition and competitive advantage, and do they act to support it?

Amazon.com is so confident of its value proposition that it provides its customers with competitors’ alternatives, frequently offered at lower prices for the same product. Why? Because it knows that consumers want a choice. So it offers that, confident in the knowledge that customers trust Amazon as the first place to go to buy online.

4. The Competitor Foresight Discipline

Competitor foresight relates to a company’s ability to foresee new competitors that could impact its markets in the future. New innovative competitors have an impact on uncovering latent needs of customers and influencing their perception of their future needs. The questions you should ask include:

Does the company consider potential competi­tors when making decisions about customers? Does it identify market shifts in order to foresee potential competitors? Do staff members contribute to competitive intelligence relating to potential new competitors and how they might affect future customer needs?

Apple has been able to pre-empt competitive changes in its markets byre-shaping industries through its innovative new products –  iPod, iPhone, iPad and now its Apple watch. Also its Apple shops give it direct access to end customers and provides an enduring competitive advantage.

5. The Peripheral Vision Discipline

Peripheral Vision reflected in workforce behaviors and prevalent activities gives the company a deep and dynamic understanding of its broader external environment. Without these strong drivers, the company will miss opportunities and risk the loss of customers due to market and industry shifts. Changes in technology, economic conditions, government policies, and society all impact current and future customer needs. The questions you should ask include:

Does the company monitor, understand, and respond to the political, economic, social, technological, and natural environment trends emerging on the periphery that could affect its customers and its busi­ness? Are all staff members encouraged to scan their respective fields of expertise for new ideas relevant to the changing external environment? Does the company act on this flow of new ideas?

The Apple iPod has revolutionized the music industry. Nike, the sports footwear company, faced a challenge at that time that it only came into the consciousness of its customers and potential customers once every 6 to 12 months when people where in the market for running shoes or athletic gear. Nike wanted a way to maintain a consistent relationship with its customers over time.  After collaboration and experimentation in a partnership between Apple and Nike, Nike+ was born. Originally it was a device that was inserted into specific models of Nike running shoes and would sync with the Apple iPod to provide speed and distance measurements. As technology has changed it has developed into an iPhone app and various other wrist-based devices made by Nike. The idea was that runners would like to track their workouts and listen to music while they run. This has since developed into sharing workouts online, and Nike even runs global running challenges to get customers motivated.

These five externally oriented disciplines-customer insight and foresight, competitor insight and foresight and peripheral vision-are focused into action for the entire company, business units, and teams through two enabling disciplines:  collaboration and alignment.

6. The Collaboration Discipline

Collaboration is another trait of workforce behavior that enables a strong customer culture and makes it possible for the company to transform the information generated by the externally oriented disciplines into value for customers and shareholders. Without strong collaboration within a business, valuable information is squandered and business opportunities are lost. Also, the impact of value delivered to customers is weakened. Key questions you can ask include:

Do colleagues from different work groups share information and work together? Are your people working cross-functionally to solve customer problems and deliver better service to customers? Are mechanisms in place to encourage cross­ fertilization of ideas, practices, and value creation? Do staff members receive individual recognition tor initiating end-to-end solutions for the customer?

Ikea, the global furniture producer and retailer, is one of the most successful businesses of its type in the world. Its culture of collaboration is so strong that they are prepared to fire superstar managers and sales people who are not collaborative. Ikea actively encourages cross-fertilization of ideas, practices, and value creation within and between stores and across countries. They recruit new staff who will fit their culture and be a positive collaborative team member. Team members within shops receive individual recognition for initiating and delivering better solutions for the customer through collaboration. This collaborative culture is translated by staff into their homes and communities as a way of improving the lives of those with whom they connect.

7. The Strategic Alignment Discipline

The final discipline of workforce behavior that enables a strong customer culture and makes it possible for the company to create and deliver value for customers and shareholders is its level of internal alignment. Without strong alignment within a business, there are inefficiencies that affect customers and lack of employee engagement that creates inconsistency and affects business performance and customer satisfaction. The questions you should ask include:

Is the firm’s strategic direction discussed regularly with all employees? How quickly are work group priorities changed when the firm’s strategic plans change? Do staff members fully understand and buy in to the company’s vision and values and see how it relates to them personally and how they work? Can all people in the business tell you how they are working differently to implement a customer-focused strategy?

The New Zealand All Blacks rugby team was recently nominated the best team globally across all sports based on their consistently winning performance over many years. It starts with the fans. Almost every New Zealander plays, watches or talks about rugby from school age. They are fiercely loyal. The New Zealand rugby union system is integrated from top to bottom with coaches, players and administrators working collaboratively to achieve their vision of “rugby world domination” and to make the fans proud. Those of us who have experienced an All Blacks match know of the powerful team culture, the preparation and practice that shows itself in the strategy and actions on the field, and the unwavering sight of all team members on achievement of the goal.

These same principles apply to all organizations – alignment of all to a consistent vision, values, strategy and action behaviors that create superior value for our customers and communities.

These seven traits represent behavioral disciplines, that at their best, enable organizations to become number 1 in their markets. They can place companies where Amazon and Google are now placed- in a class of their own representing the yardstick of the most customer-centric and admirable companies in the world – as perceived by their customers and the community at large. This brings with it superior business performance.

How Can We Measure our Level of Customer Culture?

“What’s measured improves.” – Peter Drucker²¹ 

This applies to customer culture. No matter where you stand on the customer culture spectrum, start by measuring and benchmarking where you are now.

By definition, a company’s competitive strengths and weaknesses exist only in comparison to those of its competitors. From our research we developed a measurement tool to benchmark a company’s customer culture relative to a database of now more than 200 companies and more than 1000 business units of organizations in the US, UK, Europe, Middle East, Africa, Asia and Australasia. This measures a business’s customer cultural strengths on the seven disciplines, provides a risk assessment in relation to its strategy, and gives guidelines for action to strengthen the business’s customer culture.

The Market Responsiveness Index (MRQ) tool provides benchmarks as percentiles (similar to reported SAT results used by universities for student assessments) rather than raw scores on each of the seven cultural traits. The MRI measurement tool uses a survey completed by all relevant staff in a company or in one or more business units. The result is a snapshot of where the overall company and each business unit stand compared with a large number of other businesses. It measures the behavioral heartbeat of the organization and the degree to which it has a customer culture and can respond to its markets and proactively engage market shifts.

The database includes businesses covering many industries that range from low to high customer culture on these seven traits. The MRI may tell you, for example, that your company’s ability to monitor, understand, and respond to its competitors’ strengths and weaknesses is in the 82^nd percentile (better than four-fifths) of all companies in the benchmark database. This may be considered a relative strength, whereas customer insight at the 60th percentile could be improved significantly by introducing behaviors and processes designed to improve current customers’ experiences with your business.

Even in companies that have very strong customer cultures there is always room for improvement in one or more disciplines. Also, a company’s profile is a moving target as businesses continue to improve and strengthen their customer culture.

What Do High Performers and Low Performers Look Like?

Figure 5 shows an example of the Market Responsiveness Index results of two real companie­s one for a high-performing business, and the other for a low performer. The more shading reflects a stronger customer culture that drives better business performance. The low-performing business (depicted on the right side of Figure 5) shows low benchmarked scores on customer disciplines being the 34th percentile on customer insight and 4th percentile on customer foresight, which indicates significant risk on those factors.

Figure 5: Profiles of Two Businesses: High Performer (left) and Low Performer (right)

Collaboration is above average at the 60th percentile, but very low scores on the other disciplines indicate a business that is predominantly internally focused. It would have many more customer detractors than advocates. It would have no competitive resilience and would experience declining profit margins and profitability if left unchanged.

It is at high risk of losing customers and not having the capability of acquiring new ones profitably. Its cultural capability is completely unaligned with its strategy and its likelihood of achieving its objectives is very low.

The high-performer business is a manufacturer of medical devices and is the undisputed leader in its market. Prior to benchmarking it reported higher than average performance than its competitors in terms of sales and profit growth, and profitability for the previous three years. In the Figure 5 image on the left it shows this firm is relatively strong on all elements of customer culture which links to a sustainable competitive advantage. This business is highly likely to outperform its competitors for the foreseeable future if it maintains or adds to

its customer culture strengths. Its one area of vulnerability may be customer insight that indicates a lesser emphasis on the needs and servicing of its current customers. This may open the way for an existing or new competitor to chip away at its customer base.

We have presented the evidence supporting the importance of customer culture to business performance and shown the links to business strategy. We understand how to measure it. We know what the seven disciplines are to strengthen it. Marketing’s destiny is to lead it.

Marketing is Destined to Lead a Better World

The central philosophy of marketing in today’s turbulent environment is embodied in organizations that act with a strong customer culture. Tomorrow’s world requisite for sustained organizational success. Customers and communities need it now to fulfill their needs in a fast changing world. Imagine if all organizations – for profit and nonprofit – had strong customer cultures what we could all achieve for our customers, our communities, our stockholders and our world. Marketing is destined to lead it and contribute to a better world because, at its best, that is what it does.

The last word, as with the first, is from Philip Kotler:

We can create a better world through marketing in several ways.  Commercially, we can improve our products and services and find ways to lower their prices and costs. Socially, we can work on specific social problems and reduce their severity through the application of social marketing. Societally, we can assist companies in defining the areas where they can make charitable contributions and work with others to improve the quality of life”.²²

CITATIONS

¹ See https://www.slideshare.net/bright9977/66-quotes-on-marketing-from-philip-kotler

² See https://www.ama.org/AboutAMA/Pages/Definition-of-Marketing.aspx

³ Naiver, John C.; Slater, Stanley F. (19 90), “The effect of a market orientation on business profitability,” Journal of Marketing; Vol.54 Issue 4; 20-35. Naiver, J.C., Slater S.F., & Tietje, B. (1998). Creating a market orientation’, Journal of Market-Focused Management, 2(1),241-255.

⁴ Slater Stanley F.; Narver, John C. (1994),’ Does Competitive Environment Moderate the Market Orientation-Performance Relationship’? Journal of Marketing; Vol. 58 Issue 1; 4-6 55. Slater, S. F., & Narver, J. C. (1995), ” Market orientation and the learning organization’, Journal of Marketing, 59{3), 63- 74.

⁵ Appiah-Adu, Kwaku (1997), ” Market Orientation and Performance: Do the Findings Established in Large Firms Hold in the Small Business Sector?” Journal or Euromarketing Vol.6 Issue 3;1-26, Appiah-Adu, Kwaku (1998), ” Market Orientation and Performance: Empirical Tests in a Transition Economy.” Journal of Strategic Marketing; Vol.6 Issue 1; 25-45.

⁶ Avlonitis, George J.; Gounaris, Spiros P. (1997), “Marketing orientation and company performance: Industrial vs. consumer goods companies.” Industrial Marketing Management Vol. 26, Issue 5; 38-5 402.

⁷ Chang, Tung-Zo119; Chen, Su-Jane (1998), “Market orientation, service quality and business profitability: a conceptual model and empirical evidence,” Journal or Services Marketing Vol. 12 Issue 6; 246-264

⁸ Kara, Ali; Spillan, John E.; DeShields, Jr., Oscar W. (2004), “An Empirical Investigational the Link Between Market Orientation to and Business Performance in Nonprofit Service Providers, “Journal of Marketing Theory &Practice; Vol. 12Issue 2; 59-72.

⁹ Hammond, Kevin L.; Webster, Robert L.; Harmon, Harry A (2006), “Market Orientation, Top Management Emphasis, and Performance within University Schools of Business: Implications for Universities,” Journal of Marketing Theory & Practice; Vol. 14 Issue 1; 69-85

¹⁰ Homburg, Christian; Pflesser, Christian (2000), “A Multiple-Layer Model of Market-Oriented Organizational Culture: Measurement Issues and Performance Outcomes,” Journal of Marketing Research; Vol.37 Issue 4; 449-462.

¹¹ Homburg, Christian Grozdanovic, Marko; Klarmann, Martin (2007). “Responsiveness to Customers and Competitors: The Role of Affective and Cognitive Organizational Systems,” Journal of Marketing; Vol. 71 Issue 3; 18 -38.

¹² Deshpande, Rohit; Farley, John U.; Webster Jr., Frederick E. (1993), “Corporate Culture Customer Orientation, and Innovativeness in Japanese Firms: A Quadrat Analysis,” Journal of Marketing; Vol. 57 Issue 1; 23-37.

¹³ Kotter. John P. and James L. Heskett. Corporate Culture and Performance. New York: The Free Press, 1992.

¹⁴ Ogbonna, Emmanuel; Harris, Lloyd (2000), “Leadership Style, Organizational Culture and Performance: Empirical Evidence from UK Companies, “International Journal of Human Resource Management; Vol. 14, Issue 4; 766-788.

¹⁵ Berson, Yair; Oreg, Shaul; Dvir, Taly (2005), “Organizational Culture as a Mediator of CEO Values and Organizational Performance”. Academy of Management Proceedings, pFF1-FF6

¹⁶ Forrester research reports indicate that many organizations across many industries are yet to engage in full customer transformation. See https://solutions.forrester.com/customer-experience-coverage­ areas-nc/prove-roi-49836-3147MY.html

¹⁷ http://www.alanghamilton.com/adoption-2/culturies-is-not-part-of-the-game-it-is-the-game/

¹⁸ This research is published in Brown, L.R, &Brown, C.L. (2014). The Customer Culture Imperative: A Leader’s Guide to driving Superior Performance, New York. NY, McGraw-Hill Education, Appendix 1, pp. 273-288.

¹⁹ Brown, L.R., and Brown, C. L. ibid. A detailed account of the research conducted can be found at http://www.marketculture.com/resourcegateway.html

²⁰ Elaboration of these seven customer culture disciplines can be found in Brown & Brown (2014) op. cit. chapter 1, pp. 7-29.

²¹ See http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/12008.Peter_F_Drucker

²² See http://etalks.me/philip-kotler-marketing-for-better-world/

Dr. Linden Brown and Chris Brown are authors of the award winning book – The Customer Culture Imperative: A Leader’s Guide to Driving Superior Performance. Dr. Brown is Visiting Professor at the Australian Graduate School of Management, Australian Business School, University of NSW, Sydney. Australia, and Chairman of Market Culture Strategies. He has published 14 books on management, marketing and strategy. Chris Brown is CEO of Market Culture Strategies, a Silicon Valley consultancy specializing in helping organizations measure and build a customer-centric culture.

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