Resumo

Customer-centricity is a "strategy to fundamentally align a company's products and services with the wants and needs of its most valuable customers, focusing on more profits for the long term". In this sense, companies that apply a customer-centric approach aim to maximize value through co-creation and provide superior experiences, distinguishing the company's offerings in the market and enhancing profitability.

Despite the topic's relevance, the definition of customer-centricity is still the subject of divergent interpretations and is commonly confused with concepts linked to customer service. Thus, many companies fail to align speech and practice. Therefore, the following question guides this study: Is there a gap between the understanding of customer centricity and the operationalization of this concept in Brazilian companies? This research aims to understand the concept of customer centricity and its application in organizations.

This manuscript is based on the discussion on: the concepts of customer-centricity and service-dominant logic.

The study followed a qualitative approach. Interviews were conducted with ten senior management executives of Brazilian companies to capture their point of view on companies' operationalization of customer centricity. Content analysis was conducted to analyze data.

We have identified six categories – Meanings of Customer Centricity, Organizational Characteristics, Implementation Challenges, Technology-Related Aspects, Leadership-Related Aspects, and Strategy-Related Aspects – that included 21 subcategories mapped a priori and a posteriori.

This exploratory study involved executives from Brazilian companies that embraced costumer-centricity to some degree and facilitated the development of a proposed implementation model. The model consists of five stages: i) understanding of the need for customer-centricity implementation, ii) company's strategic plan include the customer perspective, iii) customer-centricity as corporate culture, iv) structural reorganization, and v) recognition of and action on the customer’s pains, needs and expectations.

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