Dear readers of Electronic Markets,It is a popular saying that "The customer is king (or queen)" and most businesses will declare customer-orientation as a major goal in their strategies. Among the claims are to offer the best service to customers and to strive for maximum customer satisfaction and/or experience. The question remains how customer-orientation is actually measured and operationalized beyond being a mere marketing statement. Clearly, customer-orientation is a complex construct that is shaped by many factors. While price is an important determinant in most buying decisions, the overall satisfaction with a seller is influenced by many qualitative aspects as well, i.e. the mood (s)he is in, the time constraints of the transaction, the financial status of the buyer, the interaction with the seller's representative or systems or the match with the customer's expectations of the product/service and the like. In addition, marketing literature suggests that each encounter also needs to be considered in a longer relational context, meaning that customers -especially in the business-to-business segment -undertake repeated transactions, which lead to a transaction history and longer-term relationships.