The gestalt of customer centricity: Forces of resistance and research priorities

Abstract

Recent research suggests a great deal of variance in how “customer centricity” is defined in the increasingly siloed scholarly literature and that many organizations continue to struggle in effectively implementing such initiatives. The interviews reported in Urbany and Dapena-Baron (2024) reveal the complexity of both (a) the many organizational context factors that need to be managed and adapted for a firm with a strong, established customer-centric practice to sustain and evolve it, and (b) the significant forces of resistance which face a firm that is early in its adoption of customer-centric practices. Here, we step back to consider the possibility that the pursuit of customer-centricity is often hindered by underestimation of the complexity, time, and resources required for effective transformation. We suggest that taking a more comprehensive view of customer centricity to consider its broader “Gestalt,” provides value in recognizing and planning for multiple component parts and for potential synergies between them. An overview of these components leads to a number of relevant research directions, centered around two overarching priorities through the change process: creating distinctive value for customers to win demand and creating distinctive value for employees to win their buy-in. We overview the components of customer centricity and present a set of research priorities with the goal of building a greater understanding of the individual component parts and the potential synergies between them.