After World War II, the variety of products increased, people had more discretionary income, and could afford to be selective and buy only those products that more precisely met their changing needs and wants. However, these needs were not immediately obvious. Sometime during the mid-1950s, there was growing recognition among American business people that merely efficient production and extensive promotion, including hard selling, did not guarantee that customers would buy products.
With the passage of time, more knowledge, and experience, customers increasingly seemed unwilling to be persuaded. More and more companies found that determining what customers wanted was a must before making a product, rather than producing products first and then persuading them to buy. The key questions became:
1. What do customers really want?
2. Can we develop it while they still want?
3. How can we keep our customers satisfied?
Thus, the marketing concept era began. Marketing concept proposes that an organisation should focus on customer needs and wants, coordinate its efforts, and endeavour to accomplish organisational goals. Geraldine E Williams reported that the CEO of Nike said, “For years we thought of ourselves as a production-oriented company, meaning we put all our emphasis on designing and manufacturing the product. But now we understand that the most important thing we do is market the product.”
The major focus of all sets of organisational activities should be satisfying customer needs. This requires carefully listening to customers as a student listens to a teacher. Stanley F Slater and John C Narver reported that there is positive relationship between market orientation and performance.
Sometimes, philosophies that sound quite reasonable and appear attractive on paper, are difficult to put into practice. To embrace the marketing concept as the guiding philosophy, the concerned firm must accept certain general conditions and manage some problems. Alan Grant and Leonard Schlesinger are of the view that market-orientation requires organisation-wide generation of market intelligence across departments, and organisation wide responsiveness to it.
It means establishing a reliable information system to learn about real needs of customers and design the right need satisfying solutions. Setting up an information system can usually be an expensive proposition and requires committing money and time to its development and maintenance. Company-wide coordination may require restructuring the internal operations and overall objectives in case of one or more departments. Appreciating the critical role of marketing, the head of marketing has to be part of the top management team. Acceptance and implementation of marketing concept demands support of top management and other managers and staff.
To inculcate a customer-orientation culture, it is necessary that employees at all levels in the organisation should understand the value of the customer and the importance of the customer satisfaction. Obviously, the internal customers (company employees at all levels) themselves should be satisfied and motivated to promote an organisation-wide culture that puts high value on creating a satisfied customer. For this, the company has to ensure an appropriate work environment and take care of their legitimate needs. Benson P. Shapiro is of the opinion that a company is customer focused if the answers are “yes” to the four critical questions:
1. Are we easy for customers to do business with?
2. Do we keep our promises?
3. Do we meet the standards we set?
4. Are we responsive to customer needs?
