First of all, it is useful to define what an aligned strategy means.
On an economic point of view, it is possible to assume that the entire population behave with the same characteristics around the world, with their own cultural particularities but with a common basis. We will call that common basis a buying behavior. This buying behavior can be divided into four main categories that summarize all the buying behaviors noticed in the world. The challenge today for a company is to understand the predominant buying behaviors of its market environment. Once the dominant buying behaviors has been identified, it is now possible to align a proper business strategy for each of the buying behavior that illustrate the customer portfolio. The direct consequence is an adapted response to every customer needs and the company can now focus on what is more important for the customer's company rather than other aspect of the product or service sold that does not matter much the customer. .
Secondly, it is important to understand what is a traditional cost-service paradigm and then, the new paradigm brought by a behavioral segmentation of the demand.
The traditional paradigm links a growing level of customer satisfaction and the cost that the company allocate to reach the maximum level of customer satisfaction. We can see in that model that the more energy and money is dedicated to customer satisfaction the higher the rate customer satisfaction become. It is understood that the level of customer satisfaction will never reach the 100%. We can notice that the higher the level is, the more important the costs allocated to that mission are.
In the new paradigm, as the resources are more efficiently allocated, the level of money spent to satisfy the customer decreases while the level of customer satisfaction increase. In facts, for the two paradigms, the level of customer satisfaction continue to grow while in the first paradigm, the cost is increasing and in the second the cost is decreasing.
