Rita McGrath and I discuss deep segmentation using Best Buy’s Customer Centricity model and the consumption chain.

Despite an astonishing amount of lip service and a possibly even more astonishing amount of physical and digital ink devoted to the topic, understanding customers apparently remains as mysterious as ever to many corporate decision makers. The beginning of a good understanding might be right in front of our noses, beginning with the concept of the consumption chain.

MacMillan, Ian and Rita McGrath first wrote about it in a #HBR article, "Discovering New Points of Differentiation." The idea is to map out all the experiences a set of customers (or other stakeholders) goes through, firstly just to see if you understand them, secondly to see where those chains of consumption break down. Since then, the concept has found its way into many good toolkits and when used properly can generate enormous amounts of insight! For a video explainer, check out this video of a session that Rita ran, for real, together with Ron Boire in some recent post-pandemic work with a bank trying to help its customers get relief loans.

If this process sounds like something your organization could use, drop Rita a line at rdm20@gsb.columbia.edu

Original HBR article: https://bit.ly/3kQAbzK

Rita McGrath is one of the world’s top experts on innovation and growth and is one of the most regularly published authors in the Harvard Business Review. She is consistently ranked among the top 10 management thinkers in the world and was ranked #1 for strategy by Thinkers50.