The new knowledge-based economy is emphasizing the raison d'être of any company. Today, there are very few companies that dare to launch a product or service to the market without knowing the customer's buying habits and specific motivations.
The true power has the client, who today has multiple options to satisfy their needs, in the old economy consumers had to limit themselves to buy what was offered to them because there were not many options, in today's economy the products and substitute services are available to any consumer.
It is for this reason that the objective of the companies is to ensure customer loyalty in the long term and for this they use various techniques and procedures that over time have been replacing or complementing those that had their fury years ago.
The TQM (total management quality) that gave Deming such good results in Japan and that later became the United States' own, seems to be overshadowed in some cases by the CRM (total management of the service) that is beginning to bear fruit in organizations that apply it.
The CRM concept is nothing more than a simple administration and management of customer knowledge. Obviously, to reach this stage, a full commitment from the company is required to obtain results in terms of economic benefits.
Let's look at the case of an American company that, by creating a database with the specific needs that a client presented, increased its profits from $ 600 million in 1985 to $ 900 million today. Pioneer Hi Bread, a company specialized in agricultural products, developed a database containing specific information with the needs of each "farmer". The procedure they used did not escape much of what is essential, minimal and necessary to put into practice in the knowledge age where the client is the true beneficiary of this knowledge-based age.
Each seller was in charge of collecting the individualized information for each «farmer», this information took into account the date of sowing, the products they used, the expectations they wanted to meet, the problems they were currently having, etc., all those data they were incorporated into the database and were later taken into account when offering a product or service. The results?. As a result of offering individualized and personalized products for each individual client, sales at Pioneer Hi Bread climbed from 37% to 45% in net numbers regardless of how much money it will bring in the long term to have the client captive.
The hypercompetitiveness that is being experienced in the markets privileges companies that place an emphasis on knowledge as a support for their actions directed at the customer, in turn, the consumer is based on the knowledge they have of all the possible options to take a service or product that best suits your needs.
It is concluded, almost by decantation, that it is the consumer who benefits from this knowledge crusade, since there are many similar products or services, but customers like him there are only one and his decision does not go unnoticed.
The almost complete elimination of economies of scale by small serial productions only clarify that consumers are the ones who change their habits and demand that companies and products are fully adapted to their needs.
The knowledge revolution brought about a change in logic in the organizational strategies of customer-oriented companies and the market as a whole. The ideas imposed on the market are no longer productive, but the most profitable seems to be a reverse process, that is, letting the ideas of the market penetrate the organizations and let themselves be governed by them. This is partly what causes fashion.
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