Who Stole My Customer??: Winning Strategies for Creating and Sustaining Customer Loyalty

Chapter 3. A Survival Issue and Strategic Imperative of the 2000s

Today, as the automotive company mentioned earlier has learned, is a new day. What worked in the old environment, such as competing based on the attributes of your products, no longer works. Technology has rendered most new products easy to copy, with shorter lead times for competitors to ramp up production of their own version. Improvements to differentiate existing products—such as true advancements in a soap product to get clothes “whiter than white” or the addition of slide-out room expanders to make an SUV a “home away from home”—often provide little time to enjoy industry leadership or to recoup the investment. As a result, firms must now look for new forms of customer-focused ...