Ignoring the customer’s real values

I am writing in reply to your editorial (MW September 27). The customer is not ignored – only their views. Never before has so much research been instigated seeking out the customer’s experience – to which they dutifully respond.

Unfortunately, customers’ responses reflect common sense and unglamorous solutions, which marketers have no interest in presenting to their board. It is not customers that are ignored, but results of the surveys, and as long as marketers and board directors forget that customers, not markets, buy things, then consumers will be just another product to “package up” and sell like a brand.

Janet Weitz

Chairman and chief executive

FDS International

London N19