The new marketing. What does 'customer focus' now mean?
Richard Brookes University of Auckland, New Zealand andVictoria Little University of Auckland, New Zealand
INTRODUCTION
More than a decade ago, in The Marketing Imagination, Theodore Levitt (1983) wrote: 'The purpose of a business is to create and keep a customer.' It is a sentiment at the very heart of marketing, and one that is expressed by every management guru, from Tom Peters to Peter Drucker.
The manner in which it is now being interpreted by marketing academics and practitioners is not so clear however,...