Customer Centricity

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Journal of Service Research
DOI: 10.1177/1094670506294666
Journal of Service Research 2006; 9; 113
Denish Shah, Roland T. Rust, A. Parasuraman, Richard Staelin and George S. Day
The Path to Customer Centricity http://jsr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/9/2/113 The online version of this article can be found at:
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Center for Excellence in Service, University of Maryland
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The concept of customer centricity and its benefits have been discussed for more than 50 years. Despite this fact, many firms are still struggling to fully align themselves to the customer-centric paradigm. This article identifies fundamental issues and challenges that typically deter a firm from becoming customer-centric. These are mainly related to the organizational culture, structure, processes, and financial metrics of the firm. To overcome these barriers, the article suggests a path to customer centricity that is driven by a strong leadership commitment, organizational realignment, systems and process support, and revised financial metrics. The article concludes with directions for further research.
Keywords: customer centricity; product-centric to customer-centric; market-driven; marketoriented; organization change
The concept of customer centricity is not new. More than 50 years ago Drucker (1954) wrote in his book, The
Practice of

Citations: (this article cites 35 articles hosted on the Downloaded from http://jsr.sagepub.com at University of Groningen on September 20, 2008 than 50 years ago Drucker (1954) wrote in his book, The Practice of Management, that “it is the customer who determines what a business is, what it produces, and whether it will prosper.” Levitt (1960) proposed that Downloaded from http://jsr.sagepub.com at University of Groningen on September 20, 2008 Collins 2003, p displace (Day 2000). However, as witnessed by the above Gartner Group report (2003), a large number of the companies and Gale 1987). As a result, firms were more internally oriented, with their attention focused on manufacturing superior products rather than on being oriented toward the purchasers and users of those products (Levitt 1960).