Business schools teach you corporate and marketing strategy based on models proposed by various management gurus like Michael Porter, Al Ries, Jack Trout, Gary Hamel, C K Prasad and others. However, what they don?t tell you is that the primary objective of every strategy is to ensure that companies not only acquire customers before their competitors but also that they keep coming back again and again. In other words, customers should not have any reason to patronize the competitor. For instance, when Michael Porter suggests that one of the strategies that you can adopt is to become a low cost producer, what he is actually saying is that you will not only be able to retain your customers but also that they will keep coming back to you again and again. Why? Because none of your competitors will be able to match your price.
However, what do companies end up doing? They acquire customers but lose them very quickly because they ill-treat their customers. Why? Avinash Narula thinks that businesses treat their customers poorly because they are not sure what effect satisfying customers and retaining them would have on their bottom line. So, he has developed mathematics and economics related to customer retention and satisfaction which provides indisputable proof that customer retention is extremely profitable. This book provides the proof in terms of mathematics and economics that customer retention is the primary strategy and all other strategies are just secondary. Why don?t business schools teach customer mathematics and economics? Well, they haven?t read this book yet.
