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Business schools teach you corporate and
marketing strategy based on models proposed
by various management gurus like Michael
Porter, Al Ries, Jack Trout, Gary Hamel,
C K Prasad and others. However, what they
don’t tell you is that the primary
objective of every strategy is to ensure
that companies not only acquire customers
before their competitors but also that they
keep coming back again and again. In other
words, customers should not have any reason
to patronize the competitor. For instance,
when Michael Porter suggests that one of
the strategies that you can adopt is to
become a low cost producer, what he is actually
saying is that you will not only be able
to retain your customers but also that they
will keep coming back to you again and again.
Why? Because none of your competitors will
be able to match your price.
However, what do companies
end up doing? They acquire customers but
lose them very quickly because they ill-treat
their customers. Why? Avinash Narula thinks
that businesses treat their customers poorly
because they are not sure what effect satisfying
customers and retaining them would have
on their bottom line. So, he has developed
mathematics and economics related to customer
retention and satisfaction which provides
indisputable proof that customer retention
is extremely profitable. This book provides
the proof in terms of mathematics and economics
that customer retention is the primary strategy
and all other strategies are just secondary.
Why don’t business schools teach customer
mathematics and economics? Well, they haven’t
read this book yet.
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