Page 270 - DMGT552_VISUAL_MERCHANDISING

Unit 14: Experiential Retail

aspect of the organisation. Therefore, strategic accountability must belong to the CEO Notes
rather than to a specific function or group. In owning the transformation toward customer-
centricity, the CEO can reset highly-visible, enterprise-wide KPIs, as well as rewards,
accountabilities and questions. The most effective CEOs empower their entire organisations
by emphasising and demonstrating the need for learning and humility. Their message
shifts from “do more of what I say” to “do more of what our best customers want.”
Successful CEO leadership shifts the emphasis of the enterprise and reorients everyone to
create winning outcomes for high-value customers.

Table 14.1: CEO Commitment to Change Strategy and Culture

From traditional emphasis ... ... to customer emphasis
Beating the competition Winning with the customers who matter most
Meeting short-term investor expectations Growing long-term customer value
Maintaining legacy strategies, structures and Reinventing the enterprise to improve
processes for "stability" customer experience
Data, reporting and inquiries which focus on what is Data, reporting and inquiries which focus on
selling who is buying

2. Dedication to earning and growing customers’ lifetime loyalty: Many retailers and brand
owners long ago declared as dead the idea of earning customers’ loyalty to their store or
brand. As a result, most organisations have failed to identify, disproportionately engage
and adequately reward those customers who matter most. Since (1) much of their investment
lands on the wrong customers, and (2) their best customers find most of their efforts
irrelevant and even annoying, their choices fulfil their hypothesis: Customer loyalty
declines.
Happily, some retailers and brand owners are starting to turn the question around. Instead
of asking “why are customers disloyal to us?” they are asking “how loyal are we to our
best customers?” These leading thinkers are rebalancing investments and refining strategies
and tactics in order to earn and grow customers’ lifetime loyalty.
3. Intimate, customer-level insight and understanding: Most companies — even those who
believe they are customer-centric — often rely on obsolete, institutional knowledge,
assumptions, intuition and averages when discussing customers and their needs.
Organisations must develop the commitment to set aside “what we think we know,”
replacing it with a current, accurate and data-driven understanding of their customers.
Simply put, you can’t be customer-centric if you can’t answer the following questions:

 Which customers matter most?
 What do they buy?
 How do they buy?

 Why do they buy?
4. Customer insight embedded in core processes: To put the customer at the centre of decision-
making, applying customer insight can’t be optional or left at the discretion of individual
managers. Each major decision process must incorporate structured customer insight
requirements which are inescapable and heavily weighted.
Taking this action will change and improve decision outcomes, as shown in the Assortment
example below in which traditional product-centric factors are replaced with customer-
centric metrics.

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