Proactive customer orientation and its role for creating customer value in global markets

Abstract

Today's business customers expect sellers not only to respond effectively to their expressed needs but also to understand their business sufficiently well to proactively address their latent and future needs. Yet, research shows that many firms underestimate, misunderstand, or overlook these customer expectations. To draw clarity to this discrepancy, this study explores the notion of proactive customer orientation and examines the degree to which this capability offers an opportunity for competitive advantage. While research in recent years has explored the role of proactive customer orientation in new product performance, empirical investigation in this stream of market orientation literature is significantly underdeveloped. We assess the impact of the proactive customer orientation construct on value creation by taking a novel approach that examines the proactive customer orientation → value → satisfaction → loyalty chain using data from 800 business customers in India, Singapore, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. We find that, relative to other firm capabilities, proactive customer orientation is the most consistent driver of customer value across our multinational data set. Results also show robust effects for the interaction of proactive and responsive customer orientation to create superior value. Several moderating conditions further frame the impact of this capability: intense levels of customer value change, a global relationship scope, and a transnational relationship structure. Overall, findings significantly advance the understanding of the proactive dimension within market orientation and provide marketers with insights for voice of the customer processes.

Exploring Proactive Market Strategies : Managing the Market to Create Value

“…This is an important distinction which implies that proactive firm behavior in a market strategy context should be focused on a more proactive approach to creating customer value, rather than just an increased attentiveness to customer wants (Narver et al, 2004). Findings by Blocker et al (2011) that proactive market orientation is an important driver of customer value across different cultural contexts also lend credibility to this interpretation of proactiveness.…”

“…It is not only market-oriented firms that employ market strategies-indeed I cannot imagine a firm that does not have any form of strategy for delivering value to its customers-but market orientation is still an important foundation for enabling superior value creation, meaning non-market-oriented firms will face greater difficulty in achieving superior performance (Blocker et al, 2011;Day, 2011;Frösén et al, 2016). Proactive market strategies thus represent the ways in which proactive firms leverage their superior insights and market-oriented capabilities to enable superior value creation (cf.…”

“…Proactive market strategies thus represent the ways in which proactive firms leverage their superior insights and market-oriented capabilities to enable superior value creation (cf. Day, 1994;Narver et al, 2004;Blocker et al, 2011), which is especially important in the more complex and dynamic environments of modern markets (cf. Tsai et al, 2008;Day, 2011;Bodlaj, Coenders & Zabkar, 2012).…”

“…This opened up the opportunity for a broader field of study of market orientation using proactiveness and responsiveness as two dimensions to span a broader range of market-oriented behaviors (e.g. Tsai, Chou & Kuo, 2008;Zhang & Duan, 2010;Li, Lin & Chu, 2011;Blocker et al, 2011;Bodlaj, Coenders & Zabkar, 2012;Lamore, Berkowitz & Farrington, 2013;Herhausen, 2016). Atuahene-Gima et al (2005) actually found that there were negative consequences for a firm's new product performance from combining the two aspects, but subsequent research has mostly shown positive results from simultaneously having a high proactive market orientation and a high responsive market orientation (Herhausen, 2016;see Aspara & Tikkanen, 2013, for another example of negative results).…”

“…In a market strategy context, proactiveness has been identified as an important driver of firm innovativeness (Zhang & Duan, 2010), new product success (Narver et al, 2004), customer value creation (Blocker et al, 2011) and superior business performance (Slater & Narver, 1998;Herhausen, 2016), yet little research has delved into how proactive firms gain these benefits. It is thus relatively clear that firms which are proactive in their market strategies gain benefits, but it is unclear how firms can become proactive or which of the activities they perform lead to these benefits (cf.…”