A Study On Dynamic Customer Value From Customer's Perspective

Driven by more and more demanding customers, global competition, and slow-growth, many organizations search for a new ways to achieve and retain a competitive advantage, so that they can survive and develop in the market. In order to realize this goal, they must keep in line with one of most important principles, that is customer orientation and super customer value. Taking into consideration of changes of environments and the limitation of static customer value theory, we think it is necessary to research dynamic customer value theory broadly and profoundly, and organizations can cultivate their own competitive advantage.Our study is based on customer perspective; after extensive literatures review, we found there is one shortcoming in current customer value theory, that is current theory mainly discuss static customer value, and has little concern on dynamic customer value. While the study on dynamic customer value theory have contributions on both theory and operations. Firstly, the study on dynamic customer value theory enable us to understand customers' needs and select target market more precisely, then we can improve our marketing efficient greatly. Secondly, the firm may master the trends of dynamic customer value changes and adjust or perfect their strategies accordingly, moreover they can cultivate their competitive advantages. Thirdly, the study on dynamic customer value theory may improve the ability to forecast the future changes of markets and give ideas of new products/services development, so that the firm can create and deliver super customer value and the firm has a competitive position in the market.We try to construct our more perfect dynamic customer value theory system in dimensions vertically and horizontally around the concept of dynamic customer value. Moreover, we mainly study the changes of dynamic customer value and discuss the relationship between the trends of dynamic customer value and achievement of firms as time goes on; the differences of dynamic customer value horizontally help us to entry a new market and implement of make market plan. The study of dynamic customer value theory and customer value change trends can help firms understand meet customers' needs and improve adaptability of firms to market.Based on dynamic customer value theory and relative assumptions, we formulate our theory models. The first purchase concept model illustrates the forming of customer value and of attitude to the brand of the firm. The repetition of purchase concept model illustrates the forming of cumulative customer value, which contains five stages including customer desired value forming, first impression forming, brand effect, generalizing effect and new customer desired value forming. Each stage has its own critical value factors. The concept models explanation the forming,changing,cumulating of overall customer value during the whole process. The repetition of purchase process model also imply that the more frequency of repurchase, the high customer loyalty. But the concept models can't give an answer to the question that relationship and importance of each factors of dynamic customer value and how these factors impact on the overall dynamic customer value. Further more, we construct another functional relationship model which interprets the relationship among the factors and between the factors and dynamic customer value.As an exploratory study, our dynamic customer value theory needs to be examined. We focus on diner of Chinese restaurants. A focus group interview on the critical factors of ordinary customers dining was held in one of most famous city. Then a market research was held among target customers. The results support our conclusions partly.The purpose of this research is to help firms to cultivate the competitive advantage over their opponents and obtain the chance to survive and sustained development. There is little research on this subject in present literature. Traditionally, the organizations reinforced an internal orientation for improvements, such as total quality management, reengineering, downsizing and restructuring. However, they found it difficult to get and remain competitive advantage; We think we can take some measures to cultivate the competitive advantage based on dynamic customer value. The measures include to take proactive actions and engaging in dynamic customer value management. Then the firms can create and deliver super customer value to target customers and establish trustable relationship between them and realizing customer satisfaction and customer loyalty, at last obtain their competitive advantage.The study of contributions to customer value theory include: (1) We put forward a new concept--dynamic customer value, which contains more than static customer value; (2) We study the changes of dynamic customer value and explain why they changes; (3) We construct dynamic customer value theory and formulate theory models on the study.Limitations and future research directionsThis study sheds some light on the theory of dynamic customer value theory and the changes in the future. However, the results of this study must be interpreted in view of certain limitations. This is one of the first studies to investigate the development tendency of dynamic customer value. The results of this study are generated from a single industry; additional studies in other industries may strengthen the generalization of the proposed constructs and framework.