Valerie Mathieu - A Customer-oriented Manager for B2B Services

1 1More precisely, it is the term market orientation that first appeared in 1990, in the title of an academic article (Kohli and Jaworski 1990).

2 2 The cultural approach is defended in particular by authors such as Webster (1988), Narver and Slater (1990), Deshpandé et al. (1993) and Day (1994).

3 3 Authors such as Kohli and Jaworski (1990) and Matsuno and Mentzer (2000) have taken a more behavioral approach to market orientation.

4 4 This benefit was put forward by Narver and Slater in 1990 (Narver and Slater 1990) and reaffirmed in 2000 by Slater and Narver (Slater and Narver 2000).

5 5 Several studies, some of them based on empirical validation, elaborate on these different links (Kohli and Jaworski 1990; Piercy et al. 2002; Esslimani 2012; Zablah et al. 2012; Sousa and Coelho 2013).

6 6 This is a CCO Council source taken from Cap Gemini Consulting: Cap Gemini Consulting (2014). L’expérience client à tout prix. Journal of Marketing Revolution, no. 2, p. 13 [Online]. Available at: www.capgemini.com/consulting-fr/wp-content/uploads/sites/31/2014/02/journal_of_marketing_revolution_2_capgemini_consulting.pdf[Accessed 31 August 2019].

7 7 This commitment from the highest managerial levels is emphasized by Weick (1995), Kennedy et al. (2003) and Bonin and Jean (2010).

8 8 www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOo42TBYF4k&t=3s.

9 9 Grasland, E., Bauer, A., Trévidic, B. (2018). Interview de Guillaume Faury : “Avec Airbus le CSeries a tout pour devenir un succès commercial majeur”. Les Echos, June 1 [Online]. Available from: www.lesechos.fr/2018/06/guillaume-faury-with-airbus-the-cseries-has-everything-to-be-a-major-commercial-success-991647[Accessed 12 September 2019].

10 10 Airbuzz (2019). The Magazine for Team Airbus.

11 11The transformational leader theory was initiated by Burns in 1978 (Burns 1978). For a summary of work on this form of leadership, see Gotteland (2019).

12 12 ZEBOX relies on corporate partners who are leaders in their field: CMA CGM, Accenture, BNP Paribas, Centrimex, CEVA, CIMC, EY, GTT.

13 13 In the very first lines of their introduction, Kohli and Jaworski make it clear that “the term ‘market orientation’ means the implementation of the marketing concept” (Kohli and Jaworski 1990, p. 1).

14 14This hypothesis is proposed by Romero and Yague (2015), among others.

15 15 The PESTEL model summarizes the six main influencing factors in a mnemonic way: political, economic, socio-cultural, technological, ecological and legislative.

16 16 These principles are discussed more fully in Chapter 8.

17 17 This model of a marketing mix extended to the service, which is widely used, was first proposed by Booms and Bitner in 1981 (Booms and Bitner 1981).

18 18 This managerial malaise is clear from a study conducted by IPSOS for BCG between June 14 and July 15, 2019, based on 5,000 respondents (1,500 managers and 3,500 managed). BCG and IPSOS (2019). The end of management as we know it? [Online]. Available at: http://media-publications.bcg.com/BCG_Theendofmanagement-vimpression.pdf[Accessed 27 October 2019].

19 19 In an interview with Les Echos, Thierry Breton, European Commissioner, states, “the main future source of data is in industry, and more generally in B-to-B applications”: Grésillon, G., Perrotte, D., Barré, N. (2020). Thierry Breton: “Pour accéder au marché européen il faudra accepter nos règles”. Les Echos, January 8 [Online]. Available at: www.lesechos.fr/monde/europe/thierry-breton-pour-acceder-au-marche-europeen-il-faudra-accepter-nos-regles-1161004[Accessed January 9, 2020].

20 20 Forrester (2019). Embrace A New Marketing Era: End Dissonance And Drive Growth. Report, Forrester Research, Inc, p. 4 [Online]. Available at: https://go.forrester.com/marketing-strategies/[Accessed 30 August 2019].

21 21 Capgemini research institute (2018). The Secret to Winning Customers’ Hearts With Artificial Intelligence. Cap Gemini [Online]. Available from: www.capgemini.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/AI-in-CX-Report_Digital.pdf[Accessed 27 August 2019].

Service dominates the economies of developed countries and plays a major role in development. While economic analysis strongly emphasizes the weight of service in our economies, interpretations of this reality are far from consensual.

The work of the British economist Colin Clark in the 1940s, taken up by the Frenchman Jean Fourastié, proposed classifying the economy into three sectors: the primary sector, the secondary sector and the tertiary sector 1. This classification is the basis for our national accounts and INSEE today. But it must be recognized that service activities cannot be confined to the tertiary sector alone. If we look more closely at the activities of companies belonging to the first two economic sectors, we find two other types of service activities:

– internally deployed services such as research and development or the corporate university;

– services that the company combines with its products in order to position itself more advantageously in its markets or to benefit from additional financial income. The car manufacturer has long offered financing and after-sales services. The winegrower is increasingly interested in new activities such as wine tasting, cellar tours and the creation of an art center.

Without even including this tertiarization of the primary and secondary sectors, the tertiary sector has a major weight in all economies, and particularly in developed economies like France. In terms of value added, the tertiary sector accounts for 79.2% of the French economy and 56.8% if only the market services sector is taken into account. The primary and secondary sectors represent only 1.8% and 19%, respectively. In terms of employment, the hierarchy of sectors is the same; the tertiary sector accounts for 80% of total domestic employment, the secondary sector for 17% and the primary sector for 3% (INSEE 2019a).

Looking at the diversity of the tertiary sector, we see the vitality of a specific set of services, that of business services. This vast group of heterogeneous activities, which share the common denominator of offering services to companies rather than to households or consumers, represents a particularly dynamic field in the French economy. In the INSEE nomenclature, business services are not explicit, but they correspond broadly to scientific and technical activities and administrative and support services (see Box 2.1).

In its July 2019 note (INSEE 2019b), INSEE does not hesitate to describe business services as the main driver of growth, emphasizing the particular vitality of specialized scientific and technical activities.

This dynamism can be seen from the main economic indicators listed in Box 2.2.

The new nomenclature introduced in 2008 by INSEE does not define an explicit category for services rendered to businesses. INSEE considers that these activities correspond broadly to sections M and N of its nomenclature.

Section M includes scientific and technical activities:

– legal, accounting, management, architecture, engineering, control and technical analysis activities;

– scientific research and development;

– other scientific and technical activities (advertising and market research, veterinary activities, other specialized activities – design, photography, translation and interpretation).

Section N includes administrative and support services: