Customer centricity: an empirical analysis in the micro-sized firm

In theory, customer centricity has been suggested to provide many benefits for the firm. Empirically, there is however limited analysis on the factors that might encourage or constrain a firm from engaging in customer-centric practices. Less is also known about how customer centricity potentially affects firm performance. In response to these research gaps, this paper focuses on the external factors affecting customer centricity and its implications on the firm. This research relies on surveys gathered from micro-sized firms operating in Nigeria. Notably, emerging pattern from the analyses indicates that industry competition and technological turbulence are a force for good given their predictive impact on the adoption of customer centricity, whereas demand uncertainty was found to be unrelated to customer centricity. In addition, there is a consistent pattern that customer centricity not only significantly leads to marketing innovativeness, but indirectly affects financial performance through the marketing innovativeness process.