ABSTRACT
Customer's need for a certain product or service can be the same; their choice is based on various factors. With the aid of the model from Treacy and Wiersema, this can be inventoried with the customer value: operational excellence, product leadership and customer intimacy. Cost leadership is the continuous capacity of an enterprise to deploy all operational processes, abilities and capacities as effectively and efficiently as possible, to produce the products and services where there is currently market demand. Customer partnership is the capacity of the enterprise to build up a long-term continuous relationship with customers, where the enterprise time after time capitalises on customer needs. The relationship is more important than the transaction and the enterprise takes the problems out of the hands of the customer and ensures a total solution.
