High-Precision Energy Marketing:

Customer Style Accommodation through Sales Partnering and Interactive Market Learning

Summary

Deregulation and the intense competition accompanying it requires that utilities develop enhanced marketing effectiveness. In meeting such competition utility companies run the risk of either attempting to treat all customers in the same way through aggressive mass-marketing, or neglecting the substantial volumes of small commercial and residential customers by having their sales staff focus on large industrial customers.

We suggest that utility firms adopt a high-precision marketing approach to address wide customer variety and broad customer demands. By utilising a Decision Style model to segment, guide communication, and support customer bases, it is possible to accommodate diverse customers by customising product offerings, presentations, and service. The purpose of this paper is therefore to identify opportunities for improving utility-customer relationships by matching market communication and product development to individual decision styles of customers.

The main result is an outline of a set of interpersonal business customer interfaces and automated mass-customer interfaces that accommodate individual decision-making habits which in turn are seen as the key for gaining precision in the design of communications and products/services intended to meet customer demands.

The entire paper in PDF format.