Customer value creation: proposal and testing of a market-oriented model.

Summary The objective of this research is to show the role of market orientation, perceived value and market performance in the context of a customer value creation problem. This issue has been the subject of many conceptual discussions but few empirical results have been proposed. The conceptualization of customer value creation integrates contributions from four streams of literature: research on market-oriented strategies, on the consequences of market orientation, on customer perceived value from a dual perspective and on subjective indicators of market performance. The creation of customer value is conceptualized as a sequence of relationships between these variables within the framework of integrated models of "market-oriented value creation". These models identify, among other things, the market mechanisms through which organizational performance flows, i.e. how market orientation influences perceived value which in turn influences market performance. The main objective of the empirical study is to reveal the influence of an organizational factor, market orientation, on: first, the relationships between customer perceived value and several variables reflecting market performance, satisfaction, loyalty behaviors, and reputation; and second, the average/aggregate scores of perceived value and satisfaction. The study focuses on market orientation as assessed by 146 managers of 55 corporate brands and on the perceptions of 425 consumers of the latter's branded products. The results provide positive support for the theory of the relationship between market orientation, perceived value and market performance. Furthermore, the results show that perceived value has an impact on market performance. This supports the hypothesis that a firm's creation of value that is perceived as superior by consumers generates greater market performance for the firm. Therefore, creating more value for consumers leads to higher market performance for the firm.