Interaction orientation and firm performance

Marketing managers are being required to demonstrate the profitability of their marketing actions down to the level of their individual customers and on an ongoing basis. At the same time, customers expect firms to increasingly customize their products and services to meet their demands. Firms still need to produce superior products, sell smarter, and understand the markets as a whole, but the ability of firms to orient themselves to interact successfully with their individual customers will differentiate them in the future. Advances in technology have resulted in increasing opportunities for interactions between firms and customers, between customers, and between firms. An interaction orientation reflects a firm's ability to interact with its individual customers and to take advantage of information obtained from them through successive interactions to achieve profitable customer relationships. First, the authors identify the components of interaction orientation: (1) customer concept, (2) interaction response capacity, (3) customer empowerment, and (4) customer value management. Second, they relate interaction orientation to both customer-level and aggregate-level performance measures. Third, they identify the antecedents of interaction orientation. Fourth, they examine the moderating effects of customer-initiated contacts and competitive intensity on the interaction orientation-performance linkage. The results are based on a survey of top marketing managers. The commonly held view that customer-based relational performance is related to customer-based profit performance is not supported. However, both customer-based relational performance and customer-based profit performance affect aggregate business-level performance positively. Interaction orientation is a phenomenon observed in both business-to-business and business-to-consumer firms. The extent of customer-initiated contacts moderates the interaction orientation-performance relationship.