The Intimate Supply Chain

6  n  The Intimate Supply Chain

product life cycles, and supply channel relationships. In contrast, intimacy with the

customer means knowing about their emotional needs, appealing to their intuition,

and meeting the psychological desires for experiences that just make them feel

better. Of course these two customer groupings do merge and can be considered

as members of the same supply chain ecosystem. In today’s closely interdependent

supply networks, failure at any point will immediately cascade down to the end-

customer to be matched by the return flow of complaints, excess costs, and possible

loss of business to the very sources of the supply chain.

When considered as an archetype, a customer can be defined as any entity in the

supply cha ...