Title: The Satisfied Customer
Author: Claes Fornell
Published by: Palgrave Macmillan
Some books are a drag to get through and some books drag the reader through them. Thankfully this book is of the latter persuasion and is an easy and straightforward read. The Satisfied Customer by Claes Fornell builds a well crafted picture of the evolution of producer and buyer behaviour over the past 50 or so years and explains why the balance of power has moved, and is moving ever faster, toward the consumer.
Interestingly (and this is why managers in all aspects of business strategy should take this book seriously) Fornell looks closely at the relationship between costs of production, product quality, customer satisfaction and business performance with well illustrated examples. The impact on corporate performance of customer strategies are quite startling and the subsequent performance of the brand concerned explains why the consumer and the capital markets punish them severely for dealing with the customer in a sub-optimal way.
If you are trying to build a case for the long-term investment required in a customer centric business model or you are trying to understand the many variables needed to be managed around customers in a multi-channel world and the economic benefit this can bring, this is the book for you.
Reviewed by Nigel Southern, business consultant, Reference Sites
11-03-08
