Strategy: The customer effect

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US CEO Insights

Douglas D. Tough

Chairman and CEO, International Flavors & Fragrances, Inc.

Some of the key elements in IFF's success model are based around customer intimacy and consumer insights. It all starts with the consumer—a rich and robust understanding of what they want, where they're going, but, most importantly, what they want in the future.”

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How can we more effectively put our customers at the center of our growth initiatives?

CEOs are rallying their organizations around the ‘customer’ in 2013. This is a top three investment priority for CEOs (63%); expanding their customer base is where more US CEOs believe their main opportunities lie. (Explore the data)

What's different this time? A lot―and US CEOs are signaling they'll invest time and money to catch up. Nearly half of US CEOs worry shifts in consumer spending and behaviors threaten their companies’ growth prospects.

It's never been easier for a customer to walk away from an established company relationship, regardless of the industry. Thus ‘getting closer to the customer’ is escalating into putting the customer at the heart of the company. Ninety percent of US respondents say they are strengthening their customer and client engagement programs. (Watch the CEO insights videos)

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