Thesis
Author: Joanne Sabajo
Student number: 5855128
Date of submission: 31 October 2016
Study: Msc. in Business Studies – Marketing Track
Supervisor: Dr. Ed Peelen
Insights into the Lean effects on marketing
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Statement of Originality
This document is written by Student Joanne Sabajo who declares to take full responsibility for the contents of this document.
I declare that the text and the work presented in this document is original and that no sources other than those mentioned in the text and its references have been used in creating it. The Faculty of Economics and Business is responsible solely for the supervision of completion of the work, not for the contents.
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Preface
I present this Thesis as my concluding piece of the study Executive Programme in Management Studies at the Amsterdam Business School, part of the University of Amsterdam.
I have always been interested in the stories of successful businesses: how they were developed, what their path to success looks like, and how they manage to capture their customers’ loyalty.
Therefore, during this study, I early on developed a preference for the Marketing & Strategy specialism. Because of my interest in the dynamics of supply and demand, I decided to choose the Marketing track as my graduation specialization.
From the beginning of my study I have had the best support of my partner, my family and friends. I would like to thank them for being my rock in this sometimes very challenging study period.
In special, I would like to thank Dr. Ed Peelen, my thesis supervisor, for his patience and guidance in fulfilling my thesis research.
Finally, I would like to thank the employees of Louwman & Parqui for contributing to my research, and Mr. Lex van den Elsen for giving me the opportunity to complete my thesis research at Louwman & Parqui and for his guidance in this period.
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Abstract
Toyota Motor Company believed that their unique approach in the production environment, worldwide known as Lean production, should be applicable to all business processes in their organization. One significant area contributing to their business goals is the area of Sales and Marketing. Toyota decided to write down their vision on continuous quality-efficiency improvement in this area named ‘The Toyota Way in Sales and Marketing’.
To date, many organizations struggle trying to implement ‘Lean’ in their Marketing and Sales value chains. Under the pressure of quickly changing markets and organizational financial goals demanding quick wins, the line managers and employees experience difficulty in anchoring the Lean way of thinking and working within their working environment.
Current academic literature shows little knowledge on what a Lean Marketing organization actually looks like and how it performs differently.
This qualitative research tries to contribute to academic knowledge by seeking and providing insights on how a Lean way of thinking and working effects marketing execution. A case study is conducted at Louwman & Parqui B.V., the national marketing and sales company of Toyota and Lexus cars in The Netherlands.
Semi-structured interviews and secondary research show that Lean helps marketing execution in a challenging marketby providing the Lean principles, tools and techniques that support marketing to be flexible, accountable and to be executed efficiently. Key is that Lean behaviour is the motor in continuously capturing and delivering value and realizing process improvements that makes marketing efficient and effective, even when under pressure of complex market circumstances.
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Table of contents
I Introduction 6
II Literature review and theoretical framework 8
2.1 Perspectives on marketing 8
2.1.1 Marketing execution and internal context 9
2.1.2 Marketing efficiency, effectiveness and external context 13
2.2 Principles of Lean 16
III Research design 21
3.1 Research approach 21
3.2 Research strategy and choices 21
3.3 Data collection techniques 22
3.4 Data analysis 23
IV Results 26
4.1 Understanding of the research context 26
4.2 Marketing culture at Louwman & Parqui 28
4.3 The employees’ marketing capabilities 30
4.4 Marketing operations The Toyota Way 31
4.5 Effects on marketing efficiency and effectiveness 34
V Discussion & Conclusion 39
5.1 Lean marketing at Louwman & Parqui 39
5.2 Limitations and future research 41
References 43
Appendix A: Company background
Appendix B: Protocol semi-structured interview Appendix C: Interview data display
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I Introduction
Managing the whole of marketing along Lean principles will be driven by the growing pressure for Below The Line marketing and demands for regulatory compliance as well as the demands on CMOs to deliver better reporting (Dewell, 2007).
Lean management as we know it today finds its origins at Toyota Motor Corporation (TMC) where it emanates from the Toyota Production System (TPS) “lean production” and the management of Toyota in general, with its main focus on quality-efficiency improvement.
Through the years Lean evolved and found its way from the production environment to all parts of an organization with a broadened focus: create maximal customer value while
minimizing waste along entire value streams (Womack & Jones, 2003).
In particular, Marketing interfaces with Lean, having the focus on creating optimal value for the customer as a common denominator. Yet still in existing research (Dewell, 2007; Achanga et al. 2006; Piercy & Rich, 2004; Spear & Bowen, 1999; Piercy & Morgan, 1997; Ishizaka, 2009) the potential of the Lean way of thinking and acting in marketing seems to be a relatively unexplored area. Can there be a fit between the Lean way and the Marketing field where people are used to a way of working that is free format with a high dependability on expressing creativity, which in their view results in pioneering achievements?
According to Keh et al. (2006) firms spend considerable amounts of money on marketing activities, including sales and promotion. The drive towards effective marketing must be tempered by the amount of expenses incurred in the process. It defeats the purpose when the marketing costs are higher than the revenues generated.
In this case, can this typical systematic approach to efficiently reaching goals and creating value through continuous improvements then help in a marketing and sales environment?
Seeking to better understand the potential of the Lean way in marketing, I will conduct research at a marketing and sales environment where the Lean way of thinking and working is significantly embedded. I therefore select Louwman & Parqui (Toyota Netherlands) as the appropriate unit of analysis for this research. Louwman & Parqui (L&P) is the Dutch importer of all Toyota and Lexus cars on the Dutch market. L&P has completely adopted the Toyota Way as their own business philosophy and developed their culture program on these beliefs.
Since the economic crisis the Dutch car market has become a very challenging market. Due to a sharp reduce in purchasing power sales of new and used cars started to decline. In the following years the car branch became a shrinking market and several car brands
7 | P a g e experienced loss in revenues and market share. Next to this the consumer has become better informed and equipped than ever before. The customer behavior changed: loyalty to brands made place for cost-driven decisions. Customers developed new preferences for smaller, economic cars that were preferably supported by benefits from government regulation.
With this research I will particularly explore the behavior of marketing practitioners when applying Lean in the processes of value creation and delivery. I aim at developing new insights on the possible Lean – marketing pay-off that lays a basis for new theory
development.
This leads me to investigate the following research question:
How does Lean helps marketing execution in a challenging market? To support answering the main research question sub questions are formulated:
How is Lean described in the academic literature?
What does marketing in general looks like in relation to value creation? What are general views on marketing execution?
What makes a market environment challenging? How is Lean applied in marketing?
What are visible effects when applying Lean in marketing execution?
In the following parts of this thesis I will explore and discuss existing academic literature on Lean management and marketing. Following this critical review I draw a theoretical framework for this study and I explain the research design to answer the formulated research question. Subsequently, the empirical results of this research are outlined, followed by a discussion section. Finally, the main conclusions and contributions of this research to theory are presented.
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II Literature review
This section addresses existing knowledge on Lean and marketing. It shows what academic research has already been done on what Lean actually is and what marketing entails. This section covers the sub research questions: What does marketing in general looks like in relation to value creation? How is Lean described in academic literature? What are general views on marketing execution? What makes a market environment challenging?
2.1 Perspectives on marketing
Through the years different perspectives developed on what marketing contains. From an economists’ view marketing is based on the transaction or exchange of something of value. Practitioners see marketing as a process of planning and implementing the development and distribution of goods or services to raise revenue. The focus went from transaction and product driven to relation and value driven (Kotler et al., 2010). Nowadays the American Marketing Association defines marketing as “the activity, set of institutions, and processes for
creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large” (AMA, July 2013).
Value in marketing can be defined as a measure of the benefits provided by a good or service, also known as customer-perceived value. Womack and Jones (2003) state that value can only be defined by the ultimate customer, being only meaningful when expressed in terms of the usage of a specific product (a good or service, and often both at once) which meets the customer’s needs at a specific price at a specific time. Möller (2006) states that viewing value only from a buyer’s perspective is too limited. The suppliers’ perspective should also be considered; and value is not only a marketable offering but can also be created by a joined effort of both buyer and supplier.
So, on the one hand, marketing is considered as a management philosophy that seeks to express the why and how a company should adapt to and influence its market (Pimenta da Gama, 2011).
On the other hand, a perspective on marketing is that it embodies the corporate subsystem, often with the name of the department, which develops a set of tasks regarding
9 | P a g e other people and departments contributing to defining, getting and delivering value to
the market/customers.
Webster (1992) stated earlier that marketing cannot longer be the sole responsibility of a few specialists; everyone in the firm must be charged with responsibility for understanding customers and contributing to developing and delivering value for them. Later research confirms that within companies with superior marketing performance, “marketing” now extends throughout the firm, tapping virtually every function (De Swaans Arons et al., 2014).
“Marketing has become too important to be left just to the marketers. All employees, from store clerks to IT specialists, must be engaged in it.”
The main perspectives on marketing are illustrated in the following model:
2.1.1 Marketing execution and internal context
Several marketing processes and activities lead to intermediate outcomes in the
marketplace, which in turn lead ultimately to financial results. These marketing processes, activities and their measurements together can be defined as marketing operations. The way
FIGURE 1MODEL OF MARKETING
Marketing as a corporate subsystem Marketing as a management philosophy
Marketing efficiency & effectiveness
- Efficiency: process lead time, time-to-market, operational costs / expenditures
- Effectiveness:
customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, brand equity, customer lifetime value, sales volumes, market share, profits, value for the firm, ROI
Perspectives Marketing execution &
Internal Context
Marketing efficiency, effectiveness & External Context Marketing Operations - Value defining - Value developing - Value delivering - Value maintaining Marketing Culture - Values - Behaviors Market conditions - Complexity - Dynamics Marketing Capabilities - Market sensing - Market relating - Strategic thinking - Strategy design
-10 | P a g e marketing operations “gets done” depends on its context. Two significant organizational conditions are the marketing culture and the marketing capabilities that shape an
organization’s marketing efforts. In the following parts first the existing knowledge on the internal context will be explored, after this an exploration on marketing execution follows.
Marketing culture
According to Webster (1993) marketing culture refers to the unwritten, formally decreed and what actually takes place in a marketing context; it is the pattern of shared values and beliefs that helps individuals understand the marketing function and thus provides them with norms for behavior in the firm. In simpler words it refers to the way marketing “things” are done in the firm; how marketing practitioners think and work together.
According to Turner & Spencer (1997) the culture plays a role in shaping the social interaction process, but culture is also an outcome of this interaction.
Earlier, Hooley et al. (1990) studied cultural components of marketing. They specify marketing as a guiding philosophy for the entire organization. This fits the earlier mentioned perspective of marketing as a management philosophy. An example of this type of
organizational culture is the ‘Market Orientation’ perspective, where practitioners’ behavior can be characterized as being intensely customer-centric in focus, directing organizational decision making to meet explicit and latent customer needs at a profit (Darroch et al., 2004).
Market-oriented firms adopt a proactive search for market opportunities, use market information as a basis for analysis and organizational learning, and adopt a long-term strategic perspective on markets and brands (Jobber, 2004).
Typical skills of marketing practitioners are: being analytical, having good
communication skills and working methodically. Despite their tendency to understand the markets in-depth, they have a high focus on quick results being fed by their mission to win customers and beat competition. In these processes of reaching goals, they work closely with different disciplines within the organization and with externals. The marketing practitioners very often pass decision points in the marketing operational processes: should I act quickly, or do some more consultation first (ECABO, 2004)? Should I follow the rules or should I step out of line and be creative?
11 | P a g e focused, being precise, being proactive, and being sensitive, being able to anticipate, having strong communication skills, being flexible, being service-oriented, and being able to work independently as on a team.
Being driven by quick results, structure and efficient working is not top of the marketing practitioners’ mind. A long-standing caricature of marketing practitioners is that they love to spend money and hate to assess the results of that spending (O’Sullivan &Abela, 2007).
Marketing capabilities
Since the early views on the purpose of marketing capabilities, such as the resource based view, several studies have shown the positive relationship between marketing capabilities and business performance.
Creating and delivering value successfully requires the ability to apply various capabilities. Which capabilities need to be mastered by an organization depends on the organizations’ strategy and the given business environment.
Marketing capabilities are developed when the firm’s marketing employees frequently apply their knowledge and expertise, often combined with tangible resources (assets), to solve the firm’s marketing problems (Afzal, 2009). Marketing capabilities are defined as the
integrative processes designed to apply the collective knowledge, skills, and resources of the firm to the market-related needs of the business, enabling the business to add value to its goods and services and meet competitive demands. Several researchers have developed marketing capability frameworks. One framework involves the capabilities ‘market sensing’, ‘market relating’, ‘strategic thinking’, and ‘strategic design’.
Market sensing is the process of generating in-depth knowledge (why and how) about the market place that individuals in the company, can use to inform and guide the decision making process (Wikipedia.org). George Day (2000) describes market relating as the ability to create and maintain valuable relationships with customers, where a relationship orientation must pervade the organizations’ mind-set, values and norms. Second, the organization must keep deepening its knowledge of these customers and putting it to work throughout the organization. Third, the key processes must be internally integrated and externally aligned with the corresponding processes of the firm’s customers.
12 | P a g e Strategic thinking involves an individual or a collaboration among key people who generate and apply unique business insights and opportunities intended to create competitive advantage for an organization to positively alter an organization's future (Wikipedia.org).
Strategy design is the ability of an organization to determine what to make and do, why do it and how to innovate contextually, both immediately and over the long-term. This process involves the interplay between design and business strategy (Wikipedia.org).
Marketing operations
The marketing operational processes are aimed at delivering superior customer value. Pride and Ferrell (2003) describe it as a systematic process of assessing opportunities and resources, determining marketing objectives, and developing a marketing strategy and plans for implementation and control.” Kotler et al. (2005) define the marketing process as
marketing’s role within the firm and the activities linked with it, including analyzing marketing opportunities, selecting target markets, developing the marketing mix, and managing the marketing effort.
Day’s (1999) view on marketing processes captured in the ‘marketing value chain’ is widely carried. It holds all the activities, all the input, that leads to creating and delivering value. The main processes in the marketing value chain are value defining, value developing, value delivering and value maintaining.
To be able to obtain customer loyalty it is an absolute must to understand what customers’ value (Anderson & Narus, 1998). Therefor value defining comes first in the marketing value chain. It is a process of collecting in-depth information of the market, selecting the target market/market segments and value propositions, and carrying out strategic marketing planning.
Value developing contains an organization’s ability to develop the right offerings that
meet customers’ needs and requirements at a price acceptable to the customer (Robeson & Copacino, 1994). It addresses the processes by which resources are transformed into something that is of value for consumers (Möller, 2006). Activities that take place are strategic partnering, channel design, vendor selection, pricing and offering development.
Subsequently, value delivering follows in the chain. It contains the processes of
manufacturing, logistics, order fulfilment, service delivery, selling and communications, and customer inquiry handling. The last link in Day’s (1999) marketing value chain to superior
13 | P a g e customer value is value maintaining. Here the focus lies on the processes off customer relationship management and managing brand equity.
2.1.2 Marketing efficiency, effectiveness and external context
Market conditions
Since the introduction of the Internet the market environment experienced an evolutionary expansion, from the traditional tangible marketplace for transactions of goods and services to a digital market place. Today’s digital market place, dominated by social commerce, has brought new challenges to the marketing discipline.
Also due to these breakthrough technologies, what makes current markets more complex and dynamic than before is the development of new communication and distribution channels, multiple customer groups, sharper competition and new behavior of consumers and
businesses. Businesses experienced a shift from one-on-one-consumer relationships to dealing with a network of consumers, new contexts in which consumers are shaped (Achrol & Kotler, 2013). Also, next to the known B2B and B2C markets, new online C2C markets developed.
Labrecque et al. (2013) state that due to the digital developments consumers have become more informed about product and service developments and experiences of other consumers by consumer-generated content. Because of this they are less easy to be influenced by marketing tactics. The upcoming of social network sites, specifically user-generated content, had its impact on sales and firm value (Leeflang et al., 2014). Due to more public sharing among consumers, businesses on social media, and the growing availability and access to digital information, behavior changed rapidly. The consumer power grew on the market. Markets started to become more demanding, having marketers making necessary changes in their marketing strategies.
Leeflang et al. (2014) recognized the struggle of marketers to comprehend and cope with the accelerating complexity and dynamics of the markets. The four biggest challenges, pointed out by CMOs in an IBM study (2011), are on dealing with big data, social media, proliferation of channels and shifting consumer demographics, most digital marketing developments.
14 | P a g e Several (new) sources, such as social media content, where identified providing huge amounts of information about the market and consumers. How do consumers act? What do they use in their decision-making? How do they purchase? What makes them loyal?
These developments support the rapid (technological) changes in the market place, and in society at large.
Marketing efficiency and effectiveness
Today’s competitive environment, a continuously changing environment, requires marketing that is both effective and efficient, if organizations want to achieve their market and financial goals (Pimenta da Gama, 2011). Marketing effectiveness depends on the marketing performance and its context, the influences of the internal organizational and external environmental conditions at that time. Performance does not only include the results but also the processes leading to them and the conditions that allowed both. It also depends on whether management can design a profitable strategy out of its philosophy, organization and information resources (Kotler, 1977, p. 73).
The success of an organization in the end is determined by how its value offering is received in the market. Does it fulfill the target group’s needs, or not? The market results can be measured by several indicators. Do consumers actually accept and buy your offering in terms of sales volumes, and market share. How is the offering perceived by the customers in terms of customer loyalty and customer satisfaction? This measures the marketing
effectiveness.
From a financial performance perspective, organizational success is typically defined and measured in terms of accounting indicators of investor value: return on investment, profits, costs, or value for the firm.
According to Achabal et al. (1984) in marketing the output effectiveness goes hand in hand with internal efficiency, the cost-effective use of resources. They state that a way to look at marketing efficiency is, given a level of output, how does the firm minimize input? It is about minimizing the usage of marketing resources while creating the marketing output.
However, practice shows that marketing and sales force are being overloaded with ad hoc actions, negatively affecting efficiency and generating high expenditures. These ad hoc actions often come forth from trying to keep up with the quick market changes and the
15 | P a g e offering of tailored solutions to customers. These are creating varied working methods, resulting in varied marketing and sales processes.
Latest trends in marketing efficiency and effectiveness
In the past decades marketing has been effected by several market developments from the rise of the Internet to the latest economic crisis. Morgan (2011) stated that since the last global recession the need to link marketing with business performance has become more urgent as marketers have been forced to defend the value of their activities and budgets. Bottom line benefits from marketing, as in measurable results, have become more and more a demand in the boardrooms. Marketing accountability has become a new focus point. It entails the measuring and analyzing of the results of marketing. However, due to research in the past two decades, the role of marketing in firms’ business performance is much less of a “black box” than has been true in the past. Yet still one of the current main issues for Chief Marketing Officers remains the use of advanced analytics and compelling metrics to improve decision making and to demonstrate accountability (IBM – CMO survey, 2014). Data has become the fuel of modern marketing (Van der Woude, 2014).
The better you are at understanding the market, the better you are at attracting and keeping customers and enhancing bottom line benefits for your organization.
The market success depends greatly on the ability to continuously respond to the mutability of the environment.
One of the most successful management phenomena developed to meet this ability is
Lean management. Lean is an answer to the ‘How’ question when striving to become more
effective and efficient as an organization. Lean thinking has radical implications for corporate practice and for all business disciplines, but perhaps most particularly for marketing, because of the marketing discipline’s role in shaping corporate practices leading to the proposal of the blueprint for the "lean enterprise" (Piercy and Morgan, 1997, Piercy & Rich (2004).
Another one of the latest ways of working in marketing is called Agile marketing. To become and stay effective in the continuous process of value creation and delivery, a quick response and flexibility of the executers is demanded. Flexibility is the ability to easily adapt to the dynamic environment; to adapt to new, different or changing requirements. The
16 | P a g e can do better in achieving the objectives and enhance your responsiveness to change. Three important starting points are: 1) speed and flexibility, 2) knowledge and engagement with customers, 3) measurable results.
The Agile philosophy has many similarities to the Lean philosophy. Some principles overlap or complement where it comes to increasing customer value, understanding the customer and learning by doing. However, Lean does not per se means becoming more flexible. Sometimes flexibility could mean making extra costs or have waste in processes just to respond quickly to a new or changing demand. Being agile often allows for greater
customization, being able to meet highly specialized or varied demand. Lean on the other hand helps to increase value through more standardization and predictability.
2.2 Principles of Lean
Lean evolved from the Toyota Production System (TPS), a process-quality orientated system, into a management philosophy, a way of thinking and acting with the focus on Value fulfillment (Womack & Jones, 1990, 1994, 2003). TPS is based on a number of principles (Piercy & Morgan 1997, Womack & Jones 2003, Liker 2004, Al-Najem et al. 2012): 1) Define value from the perspective of the end customer in terms of the product/service offering delivered; 2) Identify the value streams for each product/service and the elimination of muda (waste) in the entire supply chain; 3) Organize value creating activities around flow rather than "batch and queue" approaches; 4) Respond to the pull of product/service through the supply chain by customers to eliminate stocks; 5) Pursue perfection.
The transformation into a lean organization is complete when these five principles are applied and embedded into all areas of the business, supported by a culture in which everyone is striving continuously to improve, a Lean way of thinking and acting (Liker, 2004).
However, Liker (2004) noted that businesses around the world aren’t getting enough beneath the surface of Lean tools and techniques in their attempts to implement Toyota’s radical system for speeding up processes, reducing waste, and improving quality. Lean is more seen as a method or a set of tools to be implemented within an organization. Several literature state that to believe that just copying Lean tools and techniques will be enough to transform into a Lean organization is a guarantee for failure.
17 | P a g e Lean is a revolution—it isn’t just about using tools, or changing a few steps in our manufacturing processes—it's about the complete change of our businesses—how the supply chain operates, how the directors direct, how the managers manage, how employees—
people—go about their daily work (Melton, 2005). According to Takeuchi et al. (2008) they learned from their six-year study of Toyota that the TPS only partly accounts for Toyota’s success. Toyota also mastered a “soft” innovation that is about creating a corporate culture, which places humans, not machines, at the centre of the company. In this way there will always be room for improvement, as humans are imperfect.
To better understand this type of culture you need to understand Lean’s relation to The Toyota Way. The Toyota Way (TTW) is the written down common set of values, beliefs and business methods of TMC. It is TMC’s unique approach to Lean management, consisting of 14 management principles in four broad categories, illustrated in the following model (Liker,
2004).
FIGURE 2.“4P” MODEL OF THE TOYOTA WAY,LIKER (2004)
I Long-term Philosophy: 1) Base your management decisions on a long-term philosophy, even at the expense of short-term financial goals.
II The right Process will produce the right results: 2) Create continuous process flow to bring problems to the surface. 3) Use “pull” systems to avoid overproduction. 4) Level out the workload (heijunka). 5) Build a culture of stopping to fix problems, to get quality right the first time. 6) Standardized tasks are the foundation for continuous improvement and employee empowerment. 7) Use visual control so no problems are hidden. 8) Use only reliable,
18 | P a g e III Add value to the organization by developing your People and Partners: 9) Grow leaders who thoroughly understand the work, live the philosophy, and teach it to others. 10) Develop exceptional people and teams who follow your company’s philosophy. 11) Respect your extended network of partners and suppliers by challenging them and helping them improve.
IV Continuously Solving Root Problems drives organizational learning: 12) Go and see yourself to thoroughly understand the situation (Genchi genbutsu). 13) Make decisions slowly by consensus, thoroughly considering all options; implement decisions rapidly. 14) Become a learning organization through relentless reflection (hansei) and continuous improvement (kaizen).
TTW is supported by two main pillars: continuous improvement and respect for people. Every Toyota employee is expected to keep these two concepts in mind at all times and base their actions on it (Ishizaka, 2009). TMC wanted to make sure that while
globalizing, every international employee had the “Toyota DNA” (Liker, 2004). Enabled by TTW, the TPS, a process-quality orientated system, was developed as an improvement idea. The TPS was later labeled ‘lean production’ by American researchers (Womack et al., 1991, Womack & Jones, 2003). It was the fastest product development process marked by high quality, high productivity, manufacturing speed, and flexibility (Liker, 2004). Taiichi Ohno, one of the creators, was enabled in such a way by the Toyota Way that he was able to generate and develop his idea, which became a systematic, scientific routine of thinking and acting with managers as the teachers of that routine.
A Lean, learning organization that many businesses strive to become nowadays is an organization that applies the Toyota Way principles successfully. These principles have their roots in the Toyoda family values, the founders of Toyota Motor Corporation. Kiichiro
Toyoda integrated his family values into his business values. Through this he planted the seed for his business culture, guiding principles for how to lead, manage and behave within the organization. Through the years the business culture developed further always holding on to these guiding principles (Video: A Living History, Toyota).
A few months after introducing The Toyota Way 2001, TMC developed a
management vision to the area of sales and marketing, called the Toyota Way in Sales and Marketing. According to Cho (2001), President of TMC, to continuously improve and pursue “the best method” in sales and marketing would enable them to successfully provide
19 | P a g e customers with the best purchasing and ownership experience. The Toyota Way in Sales and Marketing is composed of 5 Ps: Purpose, Principles, People, Process, Practices. These 5 Ps entail the following: Purpose stands for connecting to the fundamental idea of the company; Principles for connecting to the vision and mission; People for connecting to and respecting
FIGURE 3.5PS OF THE TOYOTA WAY IN SALES AND MARKETING,CHO (2001)
the company’s most important assets; Process for connecting to recommended strategies for satisfying customers, and Practices for connecting to actions and measures to ensure market success.
There is an urgent need for marketing academics and executives to understand the lean thinking phenomenon, and to define proactively the ways in which lean thinking may enhance market performance, as well as to track its limitations. Piercy (1998) already reported on the threats posed to marketing by the misconceptions of customer value contained within one of the most prevalent operational programs – the lean enterprise.
Piercy & Rich (2004) argue that there remains a lack of a true customer centred value-definition as the primary building block of the lean enterprise. The traditional lean product-quality definition of customer value is therefore limited and largely ignores the service-product-quality or quality of service delivery.
This research is organized around the Lean Marketing model illustrated in Figure 4. This conceptual framework will be used to evaluate the way the Lean marketing philosophy is applied in the marketing value chain and to detect effects of Lean on marketing. I will focus on 3 areas: overall experience with Lean in work environment and two improvement projects in the marketing and sales organization. How does Lean help?
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FIGURE 4.CONCEPTUAL MODEL FOR LEAN MARKETING
Lean Marketing philosophy
Purpose Principles People Process Practices Marketing as a corporate subsystem Marketing as a management philosophy
Marketing efficiency & effectiveness
- Efficiency: process lead time, time-to-market, operational costs / expenditures
- Effectiveness:
customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, brand equity, customer lifetime value, sales volumes, market share, profits, value for the firm, ROI
Perspectives Marketing execution &
Internal Context
Marketing efficiency, effectiveness & External Context Marketing Operations - Value defining - Value developing - Value delivering - Value maintaining Marketing Culture - Values - Behaviors Market conditions - Complexity - Dynamics Marketing Capabilities - Market sensing - Market relating - Strategic thinking - Strategy design
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III Research design
This section further describes the research approach, the research strategy and the explanation of the several choices made to find the answers to the raised research question in this study.
How does Lean helps marketing execution in a challenging market?
3.1 Research approach
Given the main aim of this study to contribute with new insights to a better academic understanding of the effects of Lean management in the Marketing value chain, the nature of this study is exploratory. An exploratory study aims to seek new insights, ask questions and to assess topics in a new light (Saunders and Lewis, 2012).
3.2 Research strategy and choices
The strategy adopted for this research is the case study. The complexity in answering the research question lies in making sure that enough valid in-depth information is collected. The distinctive advantage of doing a case study to answer the research question is the possibility to get a detailed understanding of the context of this research and the activity taking place within that context (Saunders and Lewis, 2012). The case study method allows an investigator to retain the holistic and meaningful characteristics of real-life events such as organizational and managerial processes (Yin, 2003).
This exploratory case study will contain a single case, Louwman & Parqui, to collect and analyse empirical evidence. According to Yin (2003) the single case is sufficient to represent a significant contribution to knowledge and theory building and can help to refocus future investigations in an entire field. This fits with my research aim to lay a basis for new theory development from gained new insights.
However, there are some limitations to this single-case design. In a single case study concerns are on the extent to which the selected organization can be called typical of all similar organizations and whether the findings are generalizable (Saunders & Lewis, 2012). I take my single case study as a benefit, because in my research I will be less bothered by variance caused by external circumstances of multiple cases. This allows me to make better connections from my research results.
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3.3 Data collection techniques
To collect empirical evidence, I apply several data collection techniques: interviews to obtain the views and experiences of the people at all levels in the case and the collection of secondary data, collecting organizational records and market data.
This triangulation, defined as the use of two or more independent sources of data or data collection methods within one study (Saunders & Lewis, 2012), helps to establish the credibility of the research findings ensuring the quality of this research.
This research captures the cases’ experiences and results over the period of 2009 – 2013, where both overall experiences with Lean management and specific projects are addressed.
Interviews
Semi-structured interviews are conducted. This technique fits the research when it is still open how the source will react to the interview questions and you might need to vary the order of questions or the actual questions asked (Saunders & Lewis, 2012). This gives me the opportunity to work with predetermined questions, but also skip or add questions that are relevant to the particular participant.
These interview questions are outlined in appendix B. The interview questions are divided in four parts: A. Introduction, B. Marketing/Sales activities at L&P, C. Lean thinking and acting, D. Improvement project NPS/improvement project Launch.
The main topics covered in the interviews are the views on Lean in combination with the culture at the case; how do people think and act and is this actually Lean. What benefits and cons do they see in their typical way of working.
The criteria for selection to collect the relevant evidence are: 1. Interviewees mainly working within the marketing chain;
2. Interviewees fully representing the marketing chain within the organization, so not only the focus on one department;
3. Interviewees representing the full line of management to employee level, for multiple types of perspectives.
14 (senior) managers and subordinates are selected from the following marketing and sales departments, building the marketing chain of L&P:
23 | P a g e General manager Sales, member of the management team
Manager sales planning & vehicle logistics Employee sales planning & vehicle logistics Manager sales operations
Employee sales operations Manager dealer development Employee dealer development (2x)
General manager Marketing, member of the management team1
Manager product & customer marketing Head Intelligence and Data management Manager customer relations & telemarketing Head customer relations
Manager HRM;
Secondary data
For documentary analysis a selection is made of strategic and performance reports from the years 2009 – 2013. Next to this I analyze existing customer and partner surveys, and market data.
3.4 Data analysis
To analyze the collected empirical data in a systematic way, I apply the steps according to Miles and Huberman (1984): data reduction, data display and data interpretation.
Data reduction
For the first step ‘Data reduction’ I start with identifying the main objective. This is to obtain new insights on the potential of Lean in marketing execution.
Next I identify core themes starting from my research question and the existing literature. To get insights on what the people understand under Lean management, the Lean way of thinking and working, I identified themes concerning: how does the typical employee and
24 | P a g e leader behaves, what do they stand for, their norms and values and how do they work together within the marketing value chain.
Next to this I want to get insights on their efficiency and accountability. How do they
minimize input? Starting from a deductive approach I develop a coding scheme, the start list of codes at forehand.
Scheme 0.1
Main themes Codes Sub themes Sub codes
Lean behavior Lb Core values Cv
Set goals Sg Collaboration Co Lean leadership Ll Continuous improvement Ci Marketing chain management Mcm Performance management Pm
Performance results Mr Effectiveness Ef
Customer satisfaction Cr Dealer satisfaction Ds
During coding the transcripts, I changed the coding scheme, because I came up with some new main and sub themes that came from the interviewees. Things they mentioned often.
Scheme 0.2 - adjusted
Main themes Codes Sub themes Sub codes
Culture Cu The Toyota Way TTW
Lean Le
25 | P a g e Leader behavior Lb Marketing management Mm Vision Vi Strategy St Performance Efficiency Eff
Marketing results Mr Customer loyalty Cl
Dealer satisfaction Ds
Sales results Sr
Effectiveness Ef
Data display
To answer the research question ‘How does Lean helps marketing execution in a challenging market?’, I included in my interviews questions about how the interviewees perceived Lean thinking and working within the company and how this was observable in two major improvement projects that took place in the last 5 years: Project NPS and Project Launch. By applying the coding on the interview transcripts several sections were found that address the several themes. These sections are displayed in a data matrix, see Appendix C.
Data interpretation
The data matrix supports the process of finding systematic patterns and interrelationships within the research results.
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IV Results
This section reports the findings of this research. It covers the sub research questions: How is Lean applied in marketing? What are visible effects when applying Lean in marketing?
First, the context of this research is described. A snapshot is given of the internal and external circumstances through the years 2009 – 2013.
Secondly, the interview results and further relevant secondary data are elaborated in several paragraphs following the conceptual model for Lean Marketing, seeking to answer the research question: How does Lean helps marketing execution in a challenging market?
4.1 Understanding of the context
L&P started its collaboration with TMC in 1964 as the first independent partner in Europe to import and distribute Toyota and Lexus automobiles for the Dutch market.
Even though L&P is privately held by the Louwman family, and not a part of Toyota, it positions itself on the market as ‘Toyota Netherlands’. Their business structure is built around the entities marketing & sales. Their core activities are marketing, sales to dealers and leasing companies, after sales, the development of the dealership network and the training of Toyota and Lexus employees in the Netherlands.
The Louwman family maintains a long-term personal relationship with the Toyoda family, the founders of Toyota. Partly due to this relationship they were able to find a fit between the values, goals and philosophy of their family businesses.
“Already from his childhood Mr. P.W. Louwman familiarized with the Japanese culture.” (QR-9)
L&P adopted TMC’s core values from the start of their collaboration. In 2007 TMC approached L&P to make sure their values really were embedded within the L&P organizational culture.
“Toyota Motor Europe approached us with two questions: Do you know our core values? If yes, are you willing to put your signature on it? This really made us (L&P) think on giving these values, the Toyota Way, the appropriate attention within our company. We then started developing training for our people about the Toyota Way.” (AB-1)
2009-2013 market situation
(www.auto-27 | P a g e en-vervoer.infonu.nl). The number of cars sold to private and business drivers drastically decreased with 35%.
Still, also due to governmental measures (abolition of purchase tax BPM, reduction on road taxes), the demand in the Dutch market for clean and fuel efficient cars increased. These trends continued into the following years. Sales of Toyota models Prius and Aygo, the Dutch passenger car market, benefitted from the evolving customer demand, while Toyota overall sales results went downwards in the already shrinking Dutch car market, see Appendix A-1.
Most sales of Toyota are in the private and small business drivers market. This segment ‘PKZ’ (Particulier & Klein Zakelijk,) takes approximately 50% of the total car market (www.rdc.nl). Their market share within this segment has fallen considerably through these years, see Appendix A-2.
So, L&P had to face a challenging market in these years. Being a full independent distributor they were sometimes bounded or slowed down by TMC’s vision on what car models would fit the European market. For example, competitor car brands where winning territory in the Dutch market because they were able to produce hybrid car models with a tow bar for caravans which the Prius lacked. On top of this TMC, being then the largest car company in the world, faced several recalls for models with defects that did some damage to the brand that was known for its top quality and safety. An important variable here is the organizations’ flexibility in dealing with these problems.
The interviews for my research at L&P will give more insights on how the organization coped with these challenges. How where they affected by the challenges of the market and what did their specific way of working do for them in these difficult times. Did it actually help?
The following parts cover the interviewees’ answers on the way the people think and act within the organization. In the interviews several views are given on how employees and managers interpret Lean is and how it relates to The Toyota Way. Further typical behaviour within their organization is described.
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4.2 Marketing culture at Louwman & Parqui
The literature defines a marketing culture as the way marketing “things” are done in the firm; how marketing practitioners think and work together. Employees at Louwman & Parqui identify their marketing & sales organization’s culture as The Toyota Way.
There are different views on TTW and Lean. Some interviewees see TTW as the same as Lean and others say Lean is a part of TTW or say that they are not Lean at all. There is not a unanimous view on this within the organization.
“Lean is TTW, our culture. Only within Toyota we don’t know the term Lean.” (AB-1)
“Lean is not the same as the Toyota way. It does fit with our culture. I know Lean from the production process. I don’t think that it works for all the processes we have here internally.” (CD-2)
The interviewees show a high awareness of their organizational culture when explaining the TTW. Most of them know the pillars by heart and are able to explain what it means to them.
“Our culture consists of 3 major subjects: continuous improvement, that the people work together, entrepreneurship, which we expect from each employee. Set ourselves challenging goals. Always apply Kaizen and Genchi genbutsu. Always think in common interest and teamwork. Give respect in advance.” (AB-1)
“Our culture is the Toyota way. Teamwork and respect for the people are very important here. TTW is that we are constantly trying to work as efficiently as possible. Working together with a good relationship. (CD-2)
The Toyota Way is a certain way of working together and how we do our processes. TTW is also about how you can do your work as good and smart as possible. Respect is in how we approach each other, give each other space and listen to each other.” (EF-3)
“TTW is the culture of this organization. Originally TTW is: continuous improvement and respect for people. If the 5 elements within TTW work together very effectively then you have the right culture to reach the most with the least effort and you will be very innovative, because you constantly strive to improve everything you do”. (QR-9)
“TTW are our values.” (WX-12)
Unwittingly they take the values (continuous improvement, respect for people, automotive entrepreneurship) as a base for their way of acting, for how they organize their work, their daily decisions or to solve a problem. Employees experience that TTW is not being forced on
“TTW are the pillars of the company. It is the way we behave. Continuously looking for improvements. Always be up for a challenge which stimulates to be better, always go find out where something went wrong. Respect each other and always work together.” (YZ-13)
29 | P a g e them. They are not told to behave in this way. They are just explained in the training what it contains and why L&P has these values. Next to this they are constantly reminded of TTW, because the values are visualized in the entire office. Interviewees say that by seeing the determination and enthusiasm of the ‘established order’ to work in this certain way they are motivated to do the same.
Each employee gets the time to adopt TTW and is supported in their development towards the wanted behaviour. When later on there still turns out to be a misfit with an employee, he/she will be parted from the company. L&P wants to make sure that their culture stays strong. That’s why a match with TTW is the first selection criterion when hiring new people.
However, the interviewees state that during the last difficult years in the Dutch market, the employees occasionally started showing undesired behaviour. Especially higher management, being under pressure themselves, started to put more pressure on the organization. Employees experienced that higher management not always gave them the trust they were used to as in the flourishing times. Management now acts more directive and is not always receptive for other opinions. Most interviewees see this as behaviour that goes against their values ‘respect for people’ and ‘automotive entrepreneurship’.
The effect on the employees was that they started to develop feelings of insecurity and restraint. They started to spend more time on overthinking their improvement ideas before bringing something in, or they did not mention certain bottlenecks at all.
“What I do see is that when we are under pressure, then the emotions come in. We find feedback important, but sometimes we are not always open, because then your thoughts come first, can I say this to this person? Especially when it’s someone in a higher position. You will see that in difficult times this is not a priority. Our MT could do better.” (EF-3)
“Since we are under pressure I sometimes do feel hampered to say certain things, because of the way I think he might react. I do find that sometimes he pushes the team in the direction he wants us to go instead of asking us more for our opinion.” (YZ-13)
TTW is the base for their behaviour, but practice shows that it is not always easy to hold on to it.
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4.3 The employees’ marketing capabilities
The capability ‘market sensing’ is visible within L&P through several departments that are dedicated to collecting data and generating information about the Dutch car market. Secondary research shows that these departments work together with external organizations and daily generate the necessary figures and reports for the internal organization. Mainly the department heads actively use the reports to analyse performance and results. They share relevant information with the employees. These reports do not linger at the obvious
departments such as Marketing, but are spread throughout the organization. Departments such as Dealer Business Management, Intelligence & Data management do not see their
deliverables as waste. Employees use this knowledge to execute projects and improve their daily work. The interviewees show a high awareness of what happens in the outside world. They keep getting informed on what happens in the market and try to explain why this is happening. They monitor what the competitors do and develop their own ideas on how L&P should act on this. Then they try to share their ideas with colleagues and management.
Market relating is a capability that expresses itself at L&P through their strong vision on who the customer is and that the customer always comes first.
“Toyota’s vision is to make an ambassador out of each customer. An ambassador is happy with the brand and stays loyal, and tells others about it.” (MN-7)
Their vision is expressed in varied initiatives. Departments such as Customer Relations, who have direct costumer contact, and Dealer Development use several methods to
understand the customer and work on the relationship with the customers, such as NPS and mystery shopping. They use the information to improve customer relationship management. Customer experience is a very important variable for L&P. They measure it and constantly try to improve this by educating and checking their dealers on it and support their dealers in making the necessary improvements. The NPS is discussed both on employee level and management level. For the Management Team it is an important KPI. The information is used to improve internal processes and processes at business partners. L&P strives that the
customers really sense the improvements and believe that they are being heard.
“Our strive is to make each customer contact perfect, not only perfect processes, but also a perfect customer experience.” (MN-7)
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“I find it hard to determine how our department can contribute to having a customer recommend our brand to others. I do know what I can do to make the customer have a better experience: making sure that the delivery date is reliable, making sure that we have the right cars in stock.” (KL-6)
“Each time we look at what we can do to surprise the customer, how to improve the customer journey.” (YZ-13)
The strategic thinking and strategy design processes are carried out on higher management level. The employees expect this from their management. That leadership is shown by setting the course and giving the right guidelines. Formulating organizational goals each year goes by a structured and disciplined process. Initiated by the management team, the organizational goals are cascaded to individual employee level. This goes very structured to department level. From department level to employee level the quality of the translation can differ. It depends on the department head’s approach.
“Vision is developed by general management. Annual plans are developed together by management and employees.” (MN-7)
“Business goals are formulated by the management team, sometimes also by employees, a top down and bottom up process, depends on which type of goal.” (AB-1)
“Higher management sets goals and sends/presents them to my manager. He translates it to my department.” (CD-2)
“We get the hand-out “Onze Visie en Doelen”. My department also delivered some of the business figures. We translate these goals ourselves to the sub goals/activities that we have to fulfil. You need a vision, a course, and TTW can then make a difference. TTW can help you to improve, become a leaner organization, but it does not say if you are moving into the right direction.” (UV-11)
“The definitions of vision, mission and strategy are often confused. For me vision is where we stand for, mission is where we go for. You have the make sure that the organization is aligned on this. Once a year we present our goals to the personnel. After this I ask the departments what they can do to contribute from their responsibility area.” (QR-9)
“We set challenging goals, it should not be easy to reach them.” (ST-10)
4.4 Marketing operations The Toyota Way
Management of L&P sees the marketing execution as a total joint effort in delivering value to the Toyota drivers. Marketing execution starts from their vision and organizational goals.
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“Our starting point are our business goals that we visualize each year in a handout. We present them in our team meetings where we make clear what our expectations are from our people. We also ask them what they expect from us. To achieve our goals, we make use of sub instruments to do this conform TTW. To make our employees competent in giving and receiving feedback we give training and we make use of the tool Heatscan. This can be used to make collaborational relationships better.” (IJ-5)
Marketing does not start and ends at the marketing department, they expect all employees in the company to understand their role in delivering value to the customer.
The marketing department is responsible for a clear market segmentation and developing the value propositions, but they make sure the other departments deliver their part in carrying out the marketing strategy. They use their capabilities market sensing and market relating in defining what value actually is in the customers’ eyes. The marketing department sees it as an important task that this is shared throughout the company by sharing reports on what is customer value or speaking about it in other departments’ team meetings.
Daily, L&P’s main focus is on the customer. The interviewees state that their customers always come first. They only recognize one type of customer, the driver. Anyone else in the value chain is a partner.
It always starts at the customer. The customer is the private of business driver. The dealers are my partners.” (QR-9)
In developing value, the employees are very process focused. Each discipline has its own key processes. They believe that each task/activity has one or multiple underlying processes. Their processes are mapped and available for each employee on their Intranet.
Due to their supporting culture and the difficult market circumstances they daily seek for ways to make their processes from value defining to value maintaining better. They use the mapped processes to recognize improvements and to try to stop carrying out non-value adding activities and add value adding activities for the customer by evaluating everything that determines a customers’ experience.
“We do not purposely check from the Toyota way, but we do daily look at how we can optimize our processes and performance.” (CD-2)
“We are strong at process-oriented working. We stick to our procedures.” (GH-4)
“To deliver value we first find out what the process is. To understand our processes, we go to the place where the process is, whether in-house or at a dealers’ place.” (IJ-5)
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“Marketing people aren’t naturally thinking in processes. As commercial people we need to be able to act freely. They aren’t naturally disciplined; they often tend to not hold them to agreements. It’s not unwillingness per se, but it comes from their enthusiasm or opportunism. Discipline is then key, acting the way that is expected from you.” (IJ-5)
“All our processes are described, but we don’t always act upon them.” (IJ-5)
The L&P employees are very involved in the value chain and the underlying processes to keep the customer focus strong and make sure the customers’ needs and wants are being met.
They focus on the details and come up with small improvement actions that are noticeable for the customers. These vary from how were they greeted, were they offered coffee to which questions were asked about their personal situation and what advice has been given.
“TTW creates an environment in which you can effectively improve your processes.” (UV-11)
“Through working by TTW, we managed to work more efficiently. I don’t have hard figures to back this up, but I experienced that we learned to make less mistakes in our processes and also realized improvements together with TME. We learned more to look for connections between kpi’s, which helped to improve the quality of our
work, plan more accurately.” (ST-10)
In their daily actions, kaizen and genchi genbutsu are common ways and vocabulary. Employees find it natural to go research and solve a problem at the source, even when it crosses department/company boarders.
“We constantly apply kaizen to continuously improve. Genchi genbutsu is visible in our processes. With problems we carry out analysis and go back to the source.” (WX-12)
“I see TTW at higher management how they constantly go back to the source and how they make an effort to deeply understand what we are doing.” (ST-10)
Sometimes for employees a thorn in the eye can be that they make a conscious choice to take more time for analyses; that they keep digging deeper in a process. This can be
experienced as a delay in the process. Sometimes they prefer a ‘quick and dirty’ solution. This not always matches with their core values.
“We find each other in an early stadium to solve problems. Giving each other feedback are daily affairs. Feedback goes very natural on all levels. ‘A lot of personal contact to discuss what we can improve, also cross departments” ( CD-2)
“We challenge each other to find the root cause of the problem. In everything that you do try to offer the highest quality. For the customer. We try to work as much as possible from the processes.” (EF-3)
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4.5 Effects on marketing efficiency and effectiveness
They confirm to a certain level that their specific way of working positively influences their performance. TTW as a base for their behaviour stimulates them daily to be effective with everything that they do and eliminate any waste in the process. They interpret efficiency in short lead time, no unnecessary process steps, low operational costs.
Their value Automotive entrepreneurship makes each employee rethink costs that are being made while working on meeting the customer’s needs and wants, and fulfilling other business goals.
“The current market asks from our company to do more with the same amount of people. We are
continuously looking for ways to work more efficient, to make our processes Lean. We constantly consult with other departments about signals from the market and improvement points.” (UV-11)
Two improvement initiatives are now discussed that were carried out to positively affect the organization’s effectiveness and efficiency. These are the projects: ‘NPS: the shift from focus on satisfaction to loyalty’ and ‘Launch: new model introduction process’.
Project NPS: the shift from focus on satisfaction to loyalty
A few managers noticed that satisfied customers still left the Toyota brand. Mainly due to the bad economy they decided to let price of a car prevail instead of staying loyal to the brand that they had been satisfied with for years. The managers signalled this a structural marketing problem in the already shrinking Dutch car market.
Typical Lean behaviour in addressing this problem is that they decided to do a Kaizen event, coming from their TTW value ‘Continuous improvement’. They started with notifying the Management Team to get the necessary support and claim the time needed to make the kaizen successful. Subsequently, they put together a multi-disciplinary team and started carrying out the kaizen by first further defining the problem, and then following the next kaizen phases: measure the facts, analyse the facts, generate improvement ideas, implement improvements, check and secure with standardization.
“We applied genchi genbutsu and Kaizen to carry out the project.” (AB-1)
“In the NPS project I supported as line manager by asking questions and brainstorming together. I was aware that I should watch out for sitting on the initiator’s chair or for acting authoritarian.” (QR-9) “I helped to design the new process working together with TNS NIPO.” (UV-11)
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“We saw the role of higher management as conditionally for the success of the change. We constantly had to keep fighting for their attention on this. They often tried to put their responsibility back in the organization. While we worked on this project people started to see NPS as a goal on itself, they started to hang everything under NPS, while it actually was about TTW.”(EF-3)
The results were that they shifted their focus on customer satisfaction to measuring and steering on customer loyalty. This was adopted by the MT and NPS as the new measure and KPI was introduced to the entire company and partners in the value chain.
The effect with the customers was that they and their business partners were able to take the right improvement actions towards customers that helped to make them more satisfied and bring them to becoming an ambassador for the Toyota brand. These customers became less likely to pick another brand over Toyota and promoted the brand to others, confirmed by higher NPS-scores in the following months/years, see Appendix A-3.
“Instead of asking the customer only how they think our processes perform, we started asking if they would recommend us. By asking an open question we left room for the customer to tell us more. This made it also easy for us to compare ourselves to other environments.” (UV-11)
“Put the customer in the centre of our services. A new way to look at customer experience. We stopped with merely focusing on what the customer should say about our existing processes, and started asking what was important to the customer.” (AB-1)
“We had a change in the dealer organization: form CCS to NPS. We have made several small improvements. In the costumer journey, how we welcome new customers, improvements in the trainings. We also use it within our own department. And now I do use the results of NPS during my trainings.” (YZ-13)
“Toyota took NPS over from us.” (EF-3)
“Our standard working methods were applied back to the source, and kaizen. We applied Nemawashi at the MT as one of the preparations. The process did not always go flawless. Sometimes too much discussion on details. Because we want to know all the facts and figures. Our approach is thoroughly. We know exactly what we are talking about. We also made the effort to have the entire organization involved, to keep their focus on the project goals: Make sure that our dealers have loyal customers. We went outside to look how others worked with NPS and we did research on the customer side. We invited all our dealers at L&P. We presented what NPS was and gave them all the support from our office and at their location to imbed it in their organizations. We explained that this new tool is something that could help their business, they understand that our common goal is the customer. Also here Nemawashi is very important.” (GH-4)
“I only followed the NPS training to understand what it is. During our quarterly meetings the NPS results are discussed. We make sure that we contribute to a good score by making sure the data is available on time for our partners. I do not do anything else with NPS.” (CD-2)
