The Influence Of Customer Characteristics On The Customer Need Knowledge Of Frontline Employees

Publication Type

Contribution to conference

Authors

Hüttel, B. A., Schumann, J. H., Büttgen, M., Ates, Z., Komor, M. & Volz, J.

Year of publication

2016

Conference name

INFORMS Marketing Science

Conference location

Shanghai, China

Conference date

June 16 - 18, 2016

The accurate identification of customer preferences is central to the marketing concept. Given the high heterogeneity of customers, it has become increasingly important to successfully address the needs of each individual customer. This accurate perception of an individual customer’s hierarchy of needs is defined as customer need knowledge (CNK). Despite its major importance, there is only limited research in the field of CNK. Research on the predictors of CNK thus far only examined employee characteristics and relational aspects between customers and employees such as the length of a relationship. The construct of CNK, however, is defined and measured two-sided: Customers are asked to rank buying needs according to their personal importance. Subsequently, employees are asked to indicate what hierarchy of needs the customer has due to their perception. CNK is operationalized as the sum of the absolute differences between customer and employee rankings. Due to this dual-perspective approach, characteristics of consumers might have an influence on the CNK as well. Hence the goal of this study is to examine the influence of customer characteristics, such as risk affinity, on the CNK of frontline employees. For this purpose, we collected dyadic data involving customer level and bank advisor level in the banking sector of three European countries. The data will be analyzed using hierarchical linear modelling. First results will be presented at the ISMS MS Conference 2016. The study intends to contribute to literature on the importance of frontline employees’ ability to understand customer needs in order to successfully implement the marketing concept. More specifically, it extends research on CNK by showing the importance of customer characteristics as predictors for the CNK of frontline employees. Furthermore, the study transfers research on CNK to the banking context, a context in which CNK might be particularly important due to high complexity and importance of investment decisions in an environment of uncertainty.