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Historically, customer orientation is only one of two (Narver and Slater, 1990) or three (Gatignon and Xuereb, 1997) dimensions of “market orientation”, but its importance is such (“[…] customer focus is the central element of a market orientation”. Kohli and Jaworski, 1990, p. 3) that a large body of research now uses the two terms alternately.

A set of shared beliefs and values that place sustainable customer satisfaction as the organization’s primary objective.

These shared beliefs and values help employees understand how the organization works, providing them with norms for how to behave within it.

An individual’s customer orientation is “a set of beliefs and values specific to an employee”.

This leads the individual to focus spontaneously (System 1), but also when reflecting (System 2), on the lasting satisfaction of the company’s customers.

According to the authors, customer orientation refers either to beliefs and values shared within a company (attitudinal vision), or to behaviors (what employees do), both of which put the customer’s interest first.

However, the various currents of literature agree that being customer-oriented does not mean “the customer is king”. In fact, customer orientation is at the service of a company’s sustainable profitability.

What’s more, customers often lack foresight as to their real needs. Thus, a customer-oriented company must necessarily focus on their latent needs, not just their expressed ones (“[…] a market orientation may lead a firm to narrowly focus its efforts on current customers and their stated needs” Kumar et al., 2011, p.17).

Drawing on research on the subject, we propose to define two complementary types of customer orientation (one not a substitute for the other)