Customer Reviews

Know Your Customer: New Approaches to Understanding Customer Value and Satisfaction (Total Quality Management)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Many of the authors' examples are a decade or so old. The theory and implications in the light of new findings have not been updated in over a decade. Tie into this a lack-lustre style and you have a book you can safely leave out of consideration -- except it seems in Knoxville, TN, where the authors teach (and the students buy?)

Not updated in years. Tedious reading from a couple of academics with obviously little knowledge of business. Pass on this one!

Few new insights. Extremely dated. Reads like an old, rehashed Marketing textbook.

HELP! We have Sarah Gardial as the Head of the MBA Program at UTK and boy, does she love selling her garbage to customers who have no choice and who see no value in this book.

If you have a choice, avoid this book!

This book covers some pretty tired terrain in Marketing -- providing value for consumers. The delivery is dry and the examples are old. It would have helped if at least one of the authors had either some business experience or provided some academic insights. As it lies, it's obvious that the authors have little or none of the former and lack academic rigor as well: for example, several of the concepts appear poorly defined. It's clear from amazon.com's popularity/sales index that the book is used at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (where the second author serves as director of the MBA program); it's equally obvious that this book is unknown and unheralded any where else.

Although dated as some of the other reviewers have pointed out this is the book on customer value that I constantly get back to. If there are better and more recent ones, I'd like to know because I have many and none presents the concepts in a better way. It shows how to qualify and quantify value and satisfaction, and put all this into a framework that is a compelling case for instilling more customer value discipline into our organizations. You are left wondering why so many organizations are not applying these concepts. This is the first book and maybe the only book you'll need on the subject. Highly recommended.

"Know Your Customer" is for the intellectually curious marketing manager who wants to gain a foundational understanding of the differences between customer satisfaction and customer value (how customers value products). Although this book might be a bit much for the general manager who is interested in the results of satisfaction and value studies only, the general manager will benefit from an enriched view of how customer value insights can lead to innovation and the limitations of customer satisfaction metrics.

The authors lay down a framework for satisfaction and value and explain why analyzing both is key to business intelligence. The book is clearly written, uses a formal voice, has a good bibliography for the time that it was published, uses examples from industry to help illustrate important concepts and accomplishes what it sets out to do--explain the relationship and differences between customer satisfaction and value.

The book serves well as a foundational piece, but may fall short for those interested in the latest analytical techniques that include quantifying and forecasting value in terms of a willingness-to-pay metric in dollars (called product value). Product value is particularly helpful when making tradeoff decisions that influence product cost and when it is necessary to dedicate precious resources to a list of possible product innovations.

In summary, this book is perfect for managers interested in a foundational understanding of customer satisfaction and value. This book is not for those interested in the latest analytical concepts and tools.

This book is extremely useful. Brings back to the roots of customer service and still adds great value for the future.

Agree with the comment of the former reviewer. Books also misses some major distinction between the value customers expect (core value) and additional factors (add-on value). It is important for practice and academia to identify the antecedents of value (the outcomes are pretty clear).

The authors provide some unique approaches to better understanding the path from satisfied customers to those that truly value you. They provide a framework for interviewing customers that allows the supplier to gain insight on how the customer has made supplier choices in the past. This enable the supplier to create the right product / service attributes that the customer will pay for.