Customer Reviews

Managing Customer Value: Creating Quality and Service That Customers Can See

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

 

 

This book has much to recommend it - readable yet with somewhat of a quantitative approach to finding better ways to deliver value to customers.

Its' real worth is that it takes a view that requires the inclusion of the needs of the customer in the process of strategy development.

Too many books describe a process to improve the product or the supply chain without asking the most critical question - will anyone actually pay us for making these changes ?

If it has a (slight) shortfall, the book does not apply the same detail to integrating the needs of the customer to the decision making process. However, this is overcome by the sound way in which Gale seeks to assist us in finding ways to drive value for the customer.

Worth the investment - it does require some effort to read, but most worthwhile books are like that.

Managing Customer Value presents a simple yet powerful method to determine where your product falls relative to the competition with respect to quality and value. This exercise alone will most likely be an eye opener for any business. The book then provides the necessary steps that must be taken to shift the location of a product on the quality/value curve. Managing Customer Value is still highly relevant and best of all it is not that difficult to put into practice.

Dr. Bradley Gale is one of the world's leading authorities on the process of Value Mapping. Value Mapping is the technique of turning customer feedback from customers into powerful management tools that point the way to improve profits. Value Mapping is an excellent approach for industrial marketers to include in their arsenal of analytical tools. This book is filled with examples and framework templates that show you how to do it. The key for those of us in industrial marketing is getting the customer data. It's usually more difficult in industry, and there is often low or no funding available for market research. Once your company decides to stop "flying blind" this book can be exceedingly valuable as a handbook that covers to do with the information.

Prentis Hall
President
The Industrial Marketing Practice Association...

Bradley T. Gale published this book in 1994. Gale has been involved with General Electric's corporate planning operation in the 1960s, the Profit Impact of Market Strategy (PIMS) program in the 1970s, the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award in the 1980s and the Conference Board's Total Quality Management Center in the 1990s. The book consists of 5 parts, with each part consisting of 2-to-4 chapters, resulting in 14 chapters overall complemented with a preface, acknowledgement, epilogue and 4 appendices. The author explains in the Preface that "the real focus of this book is on how to measure relative quality and value as perceived by customers, and - most of all - on how to drive every part of your business from the knowledge those measurements create."

Part 1 provides the introduction of the book and discusses the 4 steps to customer value management: from conformance quality, customer satisfaction to market-perceived quality and value to customer value management and beyond. The complete customer value management methodology is based on the so-called customer value analysis, which is summarized in Chapter 2. Part 2 looks at companies that have achieved total quality management and leadership in market-perceived quality through the use of the techniques described by the author. Part 3 looks at the more comprehensive customer value management, which is the creation and maintenance of "power brands"and the achievement of excellence in technology management. In Part 4, the specific techniques are discussed in greater detail together with integration of them with other management systems in order to achieve 'true' strategic management. Finally, in Part 5, Gale looks at evidence from the "big picture" and shows methodologies to avoid problems that have caused potentially successfully total quality management efforts to fail. The Epilogue provides some ways to start applying the tools and concepts introduced in the book.

I was guided to this book by Madrid's Instituto Empresa business school professor Bill Carney and am thankful to him for this. I like this book and am somewhat disappointed that I did not read this book before. This book is based on the concept that the quality as perceived by the customer is the most important single lon-run determinant of market and profitability, which is hardly something that we can argue with. The tools and concepts described within the book can be used by all sorts of companies, from small, professional services firms to large manufacturing companies. This book and customer value analysis is recommendable to all managers and short form part of all marketing courses within business schools.

this book met my professor's requirements, but I'm not a marketing major so I can't say much more then that.

Unfortunately, this book is not a book that I could recommend. I too am majoring in MAM and this topic was recommended by my professor. If you a a marketing major or work for a large company it may be suited for you. If you are a beginner please find another book.

Following along was difficult and could have be made easier to understand.



A.Morgan
Adv. Marketing