Customer Centricity with Professor Jagdish Sheth

Many social issues are within the realm of public policy and civil organizations (NGOS), but corporations can also enable and champion social change. The business of business is more than business. As more and more companies engage in corporate social responsibility (CSR), they need to understand the ultimate users’ perceptions and motivations. This course, taught by Professor Jagdish Sheth, 2020 Padma Bhushan Award winner for Literature and Education, includes examples such as environmental sustainability, mindful consumption, and the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Planned social change requires understanding customers’ predispositions and their actual behavior.

This course suggests why companies should be customer centric. Customer centricity provides a number of competitive advantages including revenue growth and cost reduction. The key concept is customer lifetime value (CLV) For example, a typical household spends more than $500,000 over 15 years at nearby grocery stores. Customer centricity is important, but most organizations struggle to implement it properly. This is due to internal operations, processes, and most importantly, cost accounting systems. Since the industrial age, the cost accounting focus has been very product centric, and there needs to be a shift customer centric accounting. This course, taught by Professor Jagdish Sheth, 2020 Padma Bhushan Award winner for Literature and Education, offers videos, articles, and recommendations from senior industry leaders on how to successfully implement customer centricity.

With growing age, income, and ethnic diversity, customer expectations are also becoming more diverse. Therefore, it is becoming difficult to satisfy all customers with growing but divergent expectations. This course, taught by Professor Jagdish Sheth, 2020 Padma Bhushan Award winner for Literature and Education, suggests shaping customer expectations is as, if not more, important than exceeding customer expectations. There are three strategies to manage customer expectations: abandon the customer, accommodate the customer, and adjust customer expectations. Since not all customers are profitable, one must link managing customer expectations with profitability outcomes.