ABSTRACT
There are two main parts to this chapter. In the fi rst part, we tease out some of the contradictions in managing customer satisfaction and loyalty and suggest that many of us have not done too well in producing satisfi ed customers. Second, we examine a few of the seismic shifts in buyer-seller relationships – both consumer and business-to-business – that are stretching our capabilities to adapt and reinvent how we do business, in a world in which mass markets have disappeared and markets are fragmented and granular. We are now even allowed to admit that there is such a thing as a bad customer, with whom we probably do not want to do business. These are the basics of customers that cannot be avoided in building strategy. The structure of this chapter is summarized in Figure 3.1.
