Organizations need to tailor their strategy to the intended relationships with customers and thus create
a competitive advantage. However, despite the many theories about marketing, strategy and strategic
management, there is no simple answer to the question of what strategy is and how to implement.
Strategic issues should focus on customer-oriented thinking and creating competitive advantages.
A critical reflection is needed where the organization is closely linked to the value and meaning for
the customers. Difficult economic times force organizations to rethink how they interact with their
customers. Any organization should deal with the customers.
In this sense, marketing has always shown the way: it is about the customer. Everything that is decided
within organizations must benefit the customer in the end. Although the simplicity of the principle,
this is not so easily feasible in practice. Organisations must respond to changes that are constantly
taking place in their immediate but also the immediate environment (consumers, social media,
technological change, the role of the Internet, the financial crisis, the economic recession,
globalisation, outsourcing, sustainability, environmental problems, etc. )
In order to retain customers, every strategy must focus on creating a 'competitive advantage'. Without a
defensible competitive advantage, the organisation is at risk about its right to exist. At the service
of the value proposition for the customer, cooperation is being carried out and various relationships
with other organisations arise. Managing relationships in the complex supply chains is more important
than ever. Sometimes this ostensibly opposites, or paradoxes, sharpens strategic thinking and brings
more insight into strategic issues. Practice is difficult and dynamics rule rather than exception.
Management needs to be aware of this, simple answers usually do not exist and strategy is usually best
approached from different perspectives.