Aligning strategy and customer information for performance in business markets

The major goals of this research are to determine how to measure how well business units manage Customer Information and to place these capabilities in the context of their strategic choices of positioning and segmentation. This research supports the theoretical concept that learning organization theory provides an organizing framework for operationalizing the measures of how well business units manage Customer Information and a way to measure these capabilities.; The relationship between the Customer Information System (CIS) and Marketing Performance in terms of share of wallet, customer retention, lifetime customer value and return on investment is supported by this research, although somewhat overshadowed by the effect of strategic positioning choice. Marketing Performance variables mediate positioning strategy, the CIS and the ultimate performance variable, increases in business unit sales and net income. The true value of the CIS in the organization might be the ability to manage through these important metrics.; Although there is support for the idea that strategy and information management should be aligned to achieve competitive advantage, just implementing an effective strategy combination helps the business unit achieve competitive advantage as measured by the Marketing Performance variables above and by business unit growth. The decision to follow the "Both" strategy (Low-Cost and Differentiation simultaneously) could be considered a surrogate for "Strategic Excellence" in general. This strategy is associated with competitive advantage (Treacy and Wieserma 1993) and in most cases requires coordination of information throughout the business unit as well as a deep and sophisticated knowledge of the customer.