Customer centricity: Digital technology and leadership to the rescue

Frédéric Dalsace, Didier Bonnet and Katharina Lange

Business Horizons, 2026, vol. 69, issue 2, 217-227

Abstract: Why is there such a disconnect between customer centricity as a concept and its actual application by firms? Spanning all business model dimensions, our research highlights three traps that cause organizations to lose focus on customers over time: (1) product focalization, (2) rigid organizational boundaries, and (3) a fixed-pie mindset. While these traps are not new, their root causes have not previously been investigated, and we show how firms can use two tools to bridge the disconnect: digital technology and leadership behaviors. These two tools enable firms to develop a constant flow of customer insights (i.e., the value conception dimension), reconsider firm boundaries (i.e., the value delivery dimension), and transparently align firm interests with those of its customers (i.e., the value capture dimension).

Keywords: Customer centricity; Digital technology; Leadership behaviors; Business models; Value capture; Value delivery (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0007681325000394
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:bushor:v:69:y:2026:i:2:p:217-227

DOI: 10.1016/j.bushor.2025.02.011

Access Statistics for this article

Business Horizons is currently edited by C. M. Dalton

More articles in Business Horizons from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().