I have recently read an article from Ray King, the CEO of Top Level Design, LLC. He pointed out that customers’ voice of big brands nowadays is felt to be ignored. With the development of social media platforms, we might think that brands have a better communication with their customers in order to understand their needs and wants. However, there are still multi-national brands that have not realized the importance of getting customers involved. According to the analysis by Ray, 22% of customers want to collaboratively engage with brands about future products being offered, 38% want to involve with the promotions and offers the company provides and 18% want to be provided with product usage guidelines. From the 2014 Customer Collaboration report, Walmart was named as the least collaborative company.

I think that companies which spend lots of marketing expenses are more likely to make effort interacting with customers. Companies like Google, Nike, Apple and so on, customers for them have great value on their products and they play an important role in helping companies to generate new ideas. Walmart as a supermarket and taking a cost leadership strategy is more focusing on the operation and management. Therefore, it is quite obvious when comparing Google and Walmart. However, I do agree with Ray that companies eventually have to find ways to understand their customers and try to make changes for them in order to gain a long-term relationship.

Source:

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/238797