CHAPTER 3 -- CUSTOMER DECISIONS:
CUSTOMER DECISION PROCESS (CDP) & CUSTOMER DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEMS (CDSS)
“There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer.”
-- Peter F. Drucker (1954), The Practice of Management, p. 39
The Art & Science of Customer Value Creation
Drucker’s statement, “create a customer” has special significance for our understanding of customer decision making and design data research methods. Creating customers aligns the art of discovery awareness with the science of data analytics. We look into the customer’s head to gain awareness and learn about the customer’s mind from analytics. In order to create customers, marketers must create value that their customers desire. “Customer Value” is the purpose of customer decision making as well as the pursuit of company decision making based on research metrics. However, Customer Value creation is both an aesthetic art and an information science. The aesthetic art talents tap the customers’ emotional intelligence (EQ) and the information science skills track the customers’ rational intelligence (IQ). The reality is that as customers we don’t always know what we want in terms of market choices, and data analytics profiles cannot capture desires for new unexpected purchase passions.
The fact is that customers simultaneously want value based on emotional arousal (“new” EQ) and rational analysis (“known” IQ). This “yin/yang marketing” approach for creating value through art and science must be blended and balanced to discover customer decision modes (artistic portrait) and develop data research methods (scientific profile). Emerging skills for balancing conventional data (IQ) with creative discovery (EQ) include customer elicitation techniques like listening, narratives, personas, curation, and collages. If you “Ctrl + Click” on word labels below (in Red and White font overlaying the science/art diagram) the links will access online content that highlights the potential of both scientific analytics and artistic aesthetics to create Customer Value with wonder.
SCIENCE/RATIONAL INTELLIGENCE (IQ) “Yang” & ART/EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE (EQ) “Yin”