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How well are chain customers known and understood? Exploring customer horizons

The importance of a market orientation as the basis for meeting customer expectations is well known in marketing (Kohli and Jaworski 1990). The basis of this orientation is an understanding of who the customers are and what they want. While it may be expected that all organisations can identify customers through the chain and the final end consumer, the organisations in this case study did not. Many could identify categories of customers and the specific requirements they had, but not the customers’ names. Those organisations downstream and closer to consumers had a greater understanding of who the customers were and what end consumers were looking for. Upstream suppliers were only aware of downstream customers if they had a good reason to such as on-going discussions to meet major quality specifications through the chain. Based on the case study, it is hypothesised that the culture of the organisation has an impact, with some organisations more aware of the importance of understanding customer requirements and having a focus on meeting those where ever possible. In addition, there was some variance in the attitudes of individuals, with purchasing departments more focused on cost minimisation and efficiencies, and marketing more focused on meeting customer requirements and effectiveness. There was also a difference in customer knowledge and understanding at an individual level with those with greater “boundary spanning” roles having greater exposure to customers and therefore having a greater understanding.