Customer asset orientation : Antecedents and consequences

With the intensified competition and the changing roles of customers from passive purchasers towards active buyers, co-producers, co-creator of customer value and co-developer of core competences of firms, both managers and scholars tend to view customers as strategic asset. The research addresses three questions: 1) Why are some firms more customer asset oriented than others? 2) What effect does a customer asset orientation have on business performance? 3) Does the linkage between a customer asset orientation and business performance depend on environmental context? The findings based on evidence from China support most of hypotheses proposed in this research. ©2006 IEEE.