From Customer Centricity to an Everyone-to-Everyone Economy (E2E)

From Customer Centricity to an Everyone-to-Everyone Economy (E2E)

We now live for some time in a world with rapidly developing technologies, high interconnectedness and with easy access to information. Aiming to benefit from these developments, businesses often use customer-centric (CC) approaches. They are individual-oriented.
Marshall (2014) however, argues that businesses will change from this individual-centered approach towards an everyone-to-everyone (E2E) approach. What does this mean? An everyone-to-everyone economy is an economy in which customers and businesses are collaborating intensively across the whole range of value chain activities. Instead of businesses themselves being preoccupied with design, creation, production, marketing, distribution and funding, these activities are performed in collaboration with consumers and various partners: co-designing, co-creation, co-production, etc. In other words, it is an integrated framework of customer and businesses collaboration to create value, and in which transparency shapes the efficiency and trust between customers and businesses. In such a setting, organizations are opening up to embrace external influences of consumer; engaging in partnerships; and speeding up investments in digital technologies.

THE FOUR CHARACTERISTICS OF THE E2E ECONOMY
Marshall's mentions 4 things that are characteristic for the E2E economy:

1. Interconnectedness
2. Interaction
3. Awareness that customer experience is contextual to each customer’s experience, place and point in time
4. Cognitive Intelligence

THREE PRINCIPLES OF THE E2E ECONOMY
To summarize the E2E economy, such an economy bears on 3 main principles:

1. The success of a company is determined by the ability of delivering the greatest experience through the right collaborations.
2. There will be a pressing demand for contextual and predictive data so as to obtain a greater contextual understanding of customer experiences.
3. Companies need to protect their competitive advantages, but simultaneously they need to open up to external influences.

Source:
Marshall, S. B. A. (2014) “The Next Digital Transformation: From an Individual-centered to an Everyone-to-Everyone Economy” Strategy and Leadership Vol. 42 Iss. 5 pp. 9-17