The Eleventh Commandment: Transforming to "Own" Customers [Hardcover]

Sandra Vandermerwe (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0471958239 | ISBN-13: 978-0471958239 | Publication Date: July 23, 1996 | Edition: 1

How many of today's leading corporations are successfully winning back old customers and attracting new ones

The new purchasing patterns of disenchanted customers and the demise of brand loyalty have compelled many endangered corporate giants to radically alter their thinking about product design and marketing. This book describes how leading companies such as IBM, Nestle, Dupont, AT&T, and Panasonic have stopped creating products for "buyers" and have started considering the long-term needs of users.

* Packed with real-world cases which demonstrate crucial ideas, tools, and techniques in action at leading firms

SANDRA VANDERMERWE (London, England) holds a chair in Management at the Management School Imperial College, London. Her latest book is Tin Soldiers to Russian Dolls.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

The fundamental assumptions that corporations make about their customers are changing in the 1990s. Spurred on by the altered demands and new purchasing patterns of disenchanted customers, companies such as IBM, Nestle, DuPont, AT&T, and Panasonic have stopped creating products with just the buyer in mind and have started considering the user. The theme of The 11th Commandment is customer transformation. This book discusses how firms, in both the manufacturing and service industries, can change to meet new customer demands, i.e. what is the formula for success? Written in an easy-to-read style for practising managers, The 11th Commandment is filled with examples, checklists, key words, case studies, quotes, and some diagrams. The aim is to help the millions of managers struggling with the issues to better understand what is involved and what to do to make it happen.

From the Inside Flap

Only an alternative logic, and a new set of tools and terms can take corporations from where they are to where they need to be. They have to keep moving and constantly renew themselves. The customer message isn't new but the questions and methods for achieving success have changed dramatically. Firstly, customers don't know what they want; part of the challenge is to find out so that you can respond to existing markets and, crucially, so that you can create and lead emerging markets and those you can only now imagine. Secondly, customers are undergoing major change. There is no definitive formula to meet fixed and predictable needs. It's like "being on the move with everyone else also on the move". To break the existing paradigm and become a "new" corporation needs the opening and changing of minds, replacing old notions and reflecting the new world with frameworks which are exciting, relevant and achievable. The Eleventh Commandment: Transforming to " Omu" Customers navigates around the obvious and the not-so-obvious, taking us through what we know and what we don't know and what we are just beginning to dare to think about and try. "Sandra Vandermerwe is a gifted communicator. She identifies the major challenges facing company management today. One by one she takes them on and wrestles them to the ground. This book is a tour de force - a summary of all she has learned in her 'wonderful years of learning at IMD.'." Bernard Taylor, Henley Management College, Oxfordshire, UK. "In The Eleventh Commandment, Sandra Vandermerwe has taken us beyond customer segmentation and through the 'gateway' into a world of customer individualization based on an in-depth understanding of what customers do and will do and not just who they are. If there is a Twelfth Commandment it is to read this book." Anthony Travis, Partner, Price Waterhouse, Geneva, Switzerland.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 262 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (July 23, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471958239
• ISBN-13: 978-0471958239
• Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 6.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,325,323 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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