The customer has received a fair amount of attention from marketers and academics in the last decade, and for good reason. While brand focuses on an organisation’s products, there is a solid trend towards emphasising the customer – what they think, feel, say and do. This trend addresses customer behaviour instead of customer characteristics, and it includes business strategies such as customer retention and add-on selling (cross-selling), rather than once-off customer acquisition. Paying attention to the customer sells, and it sells again and again. This book is about customers as market-based assets that can be leveraged to drive shareholder value. It contains the secrets to creating happy customers… And the secrets to keeping them. Based on years of research and experience in both the business and the academic arenas, it is the ideal handbook for business leaders, and anyone else, who understands the importance and the value of the customer. 3