Why it’s essential to identify your primary customer

You might think you have a customer-driven strategy, but it’s not always obvious who your most important customers are. Writing for Harvard Business Review, Robert Simons describes the term “customer” as one of the most elastic in management theory.

If a primary customer is not identified, customer-based strategies are useless, insists Simons.

To illustrate, the author contrasts Yahoo’s strategy with that of Google. Yahoo spread resources across entertainment and finance media while underinvesting in search, resulting in a “messy and confusing” website.