Prioritising customers and other stakeholders using the AHP

Marketers often presume that the statement “the customer always comes first” is an axiom. Other specialists usually do the same with their own stakeholder priorities. Other than for internal political and prestige purposes, this is helpful neither to marketing nor to stakeholder strategic management. This research did show that customers are regarded as key stakeholders generally, and also for the achieving of most corporate objectives. They were in effect regarded as a type of default priority stakeholder. However, two other stakeholder groups – managers and employees – were ranked as just as important or more important to the achieving of organisational success generally and several of the corporate objectives. Slogans about customers always being No. 1 need to be dismissed by professional marketers. Equally important, the research indicates that marketing might well need to give as much attention to the strategic management of managers and employees as it does to customers.