Robert B. Woodruff

Customer value: The next source for competitive advantage

Driven by more demanding customers, global competition, and slow-growth economies and industries, many organizations search for new ways to achieve and retain a competitive advantage. Past attempts have largely looked internally within the organization for improvement, such as reflected by quality management, reengineering, downsizing, and restructuring. The next major source for competitive advantage likely will come from more outward orientation toward customers, as indicated by the many calls for organizations to compete on superior customer value delivery. Although the reasons for these calls are sound, what are the implications for managing organizations in the next decade and beyond? This article addresses this question. It presents frameworks for thinking about customer value, customer value learning, and the related skills that managers will need to create and implement superior customer value strategies.

French versus American Consumers’ Attachment of Value to a Product in a Common Consumption Context: A Cross-National Comparison:

This article investigates the influence of French and American national culture on consumer perceptions of productrelated value. Employing means-end theory, hypotheses are developed to predict how French versus American national culture influences the content and structure of consumer value hierachies. Hypotheses are tested using data from in-depth laddering interviews with a matched sample of French and American consumers. The findings support the contention that differences exist in the meaning and relative importance of consumer value hierarchy dimensions across the two national cultures. Furthermore, the analysis suggests that consumption consequences are especially culturally sensitive.

The influence of culture upon consumers’ desired value perceptions: A research agenda

Although consumer consumption occurs globally, the value that consumers perceive from buying and using a product or service likely differs across cultures. We show that consumer perceptions of product/service value are determined not only by intrinsic dispositions, but also by internalized cultural values and norms, and external contextual factors. This article conceptually examines how and where culture influences consumer value. Following a review of the literature on consumer value and culture, we offer an integrative model that conceptualizes culture as a metaphorical lens influencing the meaning and relative importance of the content and structure of a consumer’s means-end value hierarchy. We discuss the implications for a future research program.

RESEARCH ON BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS CUSTOMER VALUE AND SATISFACTION

In today’s markets, many organizations feel pressure to become more responsive to their customers. Managing your business to deliver superior value to targeted customers may provide a strong avenue to improved performance. The route from value-based strategies to share holder value can be complicated, however. These strategies have the most direct impact on performance with your customers in the form of customer satisfaction, word of mouth and loyalty. Successful customer performance should translate into higher market performance, as evidenced by a supplier’s higher customer retention rates and sales. Finally, market performance provides the engine for increasing company performance or shareholder value. Attaining shareholder value through customer value strategies requires committing major management attention to how best to create, deliver and communicate superior value to targeted customers.

A Customer Value-Based Approach to MBA Marketing Education

At the University of Tennessee, the authors have developed a curriculum that exposes MBA students to a customer value-based approach to marketing and that strives to teach a set of skills that will allow the students to implement this approach when they enter marketing organizations. The purpose of this article is to describe this innovative curriculum and how it was developed.

Serving the marketing discipline through journal reviews

Over the years, many graduate students and several colleagues have asked me about my approach to journal reviewing. In the course of these conversations, typically someone asks why I do it, and so I have had to reflect on this question. Students are quick to see that journal reviewing incurs significant costs. Considerable time and energy go into making sense of an article that you have not seen before and to figure out what suggestions will best serve the editor and the author(s). A reviewer accepts a certain amount of professional risk by making recommendations, knowing that an editor, other reviewers, and author(s) will see your rationale and may not agree with it. Furthermore, there are few extrinsic rewards to reviewing. In fact, not many people know much about what you have done as a reviewer or its impact. So, why take on the challenge? Fortunately, there are counterbalancing benefits to journal reviewing, most of which are intrinsic. The ones that work for me include the opportunity to participate in the process by which the marketing discipline determines knowledge contributions, the satisfaction of knowing that you helped a journal enhance its stature in the discipline, the chance to help an editor and manuscript author(s) be successful, and the personal recognition received from the discipline community. These benefits typically outweigh the costs. Interestingly, all except the last of these motivations involve a reviewer serving others. That observation encouraged me to think about the review as a product intended to serve multiple customers. This analogy seems appropriate for someone who has spent a career in marketing, and I would like to reflect on it.

Marketing in the 21st century customer value: The next source for competitive advantage

The online version of the original article can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF02894350

Issues in a Grounded Theory Study of Customer Desired Value Change: Resolutions using Phenomenology, Ethnography and Holistic Transcript Readings

This paper addresses issues involved with exploring customer desired value change through the use of grounded theory methodology. Specifically, capturing experiential value change data within a grounded theory study involves resolving three issues. These issues and their resolution are discussed along with early signs of success within a current study.

A Conceptualization of the Influence of Culture Upon the Customer Value Hierarchy

This conceptual paper incorporates culture into the concept of customer value. Utilizing means-end theory, culture is proposed to influence both the structure and the content of the customer value hierarchy by driving consumer perceptions of value and consumer evaluations of importance. Following the development of a conceptual model, a future research agenda for testing the model is discussed.

Toward A Methodology for Managerial Control of Sales Territories

A critical sales management task is to evaluate and control performance in sales territories. Often this is accomplished with limited information and considerable judgment. This article describes a management science tool, based on a comprehensive model..