Beyond products: Why customer centricity is the key to long-term growth 

Every dollar a company makes comes from a customer. All too often, however, companies have a product-first mindset and fail to put customers first. That needs to change, according to Peter Fader, Professor of Marketing at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Fader, renowned for his research and expertise in customer analytics and customer centricity, made the comments to me during an I by IMD Book Club webinar.  

He stressed that many firms misunderstand the nature and role of the customer, leading to misguided strategies. “So many companies have just swung and missed at it and continued to flail about,” he said. “A lot of it is this misunderstanding about the nature of the customer, the role of the customer – even in some cases who is the customer.”

Fader has written not one, but three books on the subject: Customer Centricity, The Customer Centricity Playbook (which I co-authored), and The Customer-Base Audit (all three are also available as an E-book…