ABSTRACT
Even if the quest for an increased customer focus has been strong in the management literature and is evident from research on contemporary business processes (e.g., Achrol and Kotler 1999), customer accounting (CA) as an academic subject has been largely neglected by management accounting scholars (e.g., Guilding and McManus 2002). This is one indicator of how management accounting as a subject is lagging behind marketing and management studies when it comes to the study of issues such as customer satisfaction (e.g., Anderson et al. 1994), the importance of creating strong and informational bonds and linkages with customers (Håkansson and Snehota 1995) with the intention of retaining customers and creating profi table relationships (e.g., Reichheld 1993). In this chapter, we try to remedy this somewhat by focusing explicitly on the role of customer accounting, albeit still in the context of the current trend of developing business relationships and managing in networks.
