Michael Lowenstein
Michael Lowenstein, PhD CMC
Michael Lowenstein, PhD CMC, specializes in customer and employee experience research/strategy consulting, and brand, customer, and employee commitment and advocacy behavior research, consulting, and training. He has authored seven stakeholder-centric strategy books and 400+ articles, white papers and blogs. In 2018, he was named to CustomerThink's Hall of Fame.
Would Consumers (Really) Spend More For Better Service?
Lately, there has been a fair amount of productive dialogue as to whether service and experience are the same thing, i.e. a rose by...
Casualties of Highly Competitive, Commoditized Services Marketing: Let’s Start With Sprint’s Framily
Services marketing, first and foremost, must create perceived – and hopefully ongoing – benefit for prospective and current customers. When that doesn’t happen,...
PepsiCo’s ‘Performance with Purpose’ Corporate and Employee Goals. Great, But……
.......What About ‘Performance with Employee Purpose, Commitment and Passion for Customer Value Delivery’? It seems to be MIA (missing in action). Since becoming PepsiCo’s...
Employee Engagement vs. Employee Ambassadorship? No….Engagement AND Ambassadorship!
Customer-centric companies invariably have (and keep) employees who are invested and enthusiastic about optimizing customer experiences, whether they are front line staff or not....
Corporate/Brand Image and Reputation: Just How Pivotal Today in Shaping and Sustaining Customer Value?
The overall importance of corporate/brand image and reputation as a driver of customer behavior has been understood for decades. That said, as a...
Customer Sabotage: Lessons and Consequences of ‘Soup Nazi’ Service Experience
We’re now at the 25 year anniversary of the first episodes of Seinfeld, the TV sitcom which became so legendary in so many ways....
Do You Really Wanna Work Here? Are You Happy? Are You Aligned? Are You Productive?
Oh, By the Way, Do You Understand How You Contribute To Optimizing Customer Experiences? And…..as an employee, are you - a. Loyal to the organization?…
Customer Advocacy, Bonding, Endorsement, Recommendation, and Influence: What’s the Difference?
Recently, a CustomerThink blogger wrote a piece in which he equated compensated customer endorsement and influence for a brand with customer advocacy. As...
The Power of Servant Leadership to Build and Sustain Stakeholder Value
During a recent series of stakeholder behavior instructional workshops conducted for our clients, one of the strongest areas of interest among workshop participants was...
Marketing Success Is (Almost) All About the Data: Optimizing Customer Behavior Initiatives
Much of what I've learned over the years about sales, marketing and customer service has to do with the critical importance of customer data,...
What Does It Take To Achieve Optimum Customer-Perceived Value? Decommoditize the Experience!
Some years ago, I was consulting with a major U.S. foodservice distribution client, helping them build more value into the products and services they...
TD Bank’s “Human” Initiatives: Marketing Strategy or Marketing Tactic, Powerful Marketing Success or Expensive Marketing Radar Blip?
On a bright Friday this past Summer, 20,000 TD Bank employees across Canada distributed green envelopes containing a $20 bill to every customer who...
A Customer-Centric Half-Decade
Two decades ago, Taizo Watanabe, former director general for public information of the Japanese Foreign Ministry, and a keen observer of U.S. marketing, service,...
The Many Joys of Winning (Back) Customers
Every year, the average b2b and b2c company loses 20 to 40 percent of its customers; and, for on-line companies the rate of customer...
One-Trick Ponies and Customer Loyalty Behavior
About thirty years ago, Paul Simon wrote a song entitled “One-Trick Pony”. The song describes a performing pony that has learned only one...
As The Old Expression Goes, “You Can Put Lipstick On A Pig, But…..
….it’s still a pig.” The saying has made appearances in many situations, including sales, politics, financial manipulation, scientific and technical invention, and so...
Optimizing Lifetime Customer Value, or – Don’t Worry, Use Churn Models
Somehow, with all the prominent articles and conferences addressing customer experience, frequency marketing, customer clubs, cards, and other loyalty-related programs, identifying customer lifetime value...
We (Marketers) See Personalization As A Customizing, Value-Building Communication and Experience Tool. What Do The Consumers Think?
There is increasing availability, and use, of large-scale personalization tools as a way to more intimately connect with today’s informed and selective b2b and...
When ‘Push’ Marketing Goes Too Far
A couple of years ago, our local newspaper, The Philadelphia Inquirer, ran a disturbing story about how a mortgage loan company in Phoenix had...
Perceived Value and Customer Life Stages: A Tale of Two Bakeries
A few years ago, findings of the Chartered Institute of Marketing (C.I.M.) in the U.K., namely that less than one out of ten British...