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Why 'Value for the Customer'?
The term 'value for the customer' has no prima facie authority of the type that may be afforded the terms 'satisfaction', 'service quality', or 'marketing'. It has been chosen for this paper precisely because it has neither clearly defined status nor common use. Its primary purpose is to act as an 'umbrella' term, one that captures a range of associated, existing concepts, all of which use similar names and imply a similar idea - that there exists some discernable property that is perceived/derived/experienced by a customer and which explains their psephological connection to a particular good or service.
Occasionally, within the marketing literature, this property is represented by the word 'value' alone and is given a demand-side orientation by the context in which it is used. For example, when Bolton, Kannan and Bramlett (2000 p. 97) state, "Customers make repatronage decisions on the basis of their predictions concerning the value of a future product/service ..."; or where Heskett, et al (1994, p. 166) claim "Value drives customer satisfaction"; or when Hallowell (1996, p.28) suggests "satisfaction is the customer's perception of the value received in a transaction or relationship ...", each appears to be addressing a similar concept to that implied by the term 'value for the customer'.
On other occasions this property is given a more explicit name: similar ideas also appear to be represented by the terms 'customer value' (e.g. Anderson and Narus, 1998; Woodruff, 1997; also Holbrook 1994 and 1996, but amended to 'consumer value' for 1999); 'customer perceived value' (Ravald and Grönroos, 1996), 'subjective expected value' (Bolton, 1998), 'customer-valued quality' (Hochman, 1996), and even 'value consciousness' (Lichtenstein, Netemeyer, and Burton, 1990). Intuitively, all might be perceived as representing an essentially uniform idea, and although Morris Holbrook may well have changed the name of his particular construct to purposely distinguish it from others of similar designation, there is little evidence to indicate that the literature generally proposes either purposely convergent, or individually distinct, notions of 'value for the customer'.
'Value For The Customer' - What Does It Mean?
The term 'value', of course, is replete with semantic variety and the often applied epithet 'customer value' is, itself, an ambiguous appendage that can be...