Customer Experience Value-Driver Framework

There has been much research in innovation. Innovation is created in different ways (Sawhney 2006.) One of the traditional approaches to innovation has been product/service innovation (focusing on attributes and features.) Many firms, such as 3M, INTEL, and HP, have successfully adopted the path of product innovation, and maintained product and technological leadership. However, over the last several years, the attention of executives and researchers has increasingly shifted to customer care, experience and service. Customer experience and service has moved from a “nice to have ” category to a “strategic asset. ” Firms are now developing operating models to use customer experience as a true differentiator. This is consistent with both recent and long-standing research findings. In recent research, Sawhney (2006) describes twelve ways for a firm to innovate, and one of the celebrated approaches to innovation is customer care and experience. Urban (2005) argues for customer advocacy and trust-based marketing. Von Hippel (2002) has empirically shown that users are the most successful drivers of innovation. Treacy and Wiersema (1997), while discussing the modes to market leadership, identify custome