Despite the importance of education in terms of spending and its impact, dissatisfaction with traditional public schools is growing due to students’ underperformance. One reason, among many, is the lack of strategic focus among educational institutions. The authors theoretically and empirically demonstrate the benefits of a customer-focused approach to strategy planning and execution for improving student performance. A customer-focused strategy enables educational institutions to identify customer needs providing the most value to customers, align strategy execution to those needs, and ultimately improve customer loyalty and academic outcomes. We demonstrate the approach using data from qualitative interviews with school leaders and surveys from 10,644 K12 parents. We conclude that a customer-focused approach helps educational institutions satisfy their customers and achieve higher academic outcomes.

尽管教育在支出及其影响方面很重要，但由于学生表现不佳，人们对传统公立学校的不满情绪与日俱增。众多原因之一是教育机构缺乏战略重点。作者从理论上和实证上证明了以客户为中心的策略规划和执行方法对于提高学生成绩的好处。以客户为中心的战略使教育机构能够识别客户需求，为客户提供最大价值，根据这些需求调整战略执行，并最终提高客户忠诚度和学术成果。我们使用来自学校领导的定性访谈和 10,644 名 K12 家长的调查数据来演示该方法。我们的结论是，以客户为中心的方法有助于教育机构满足客户并取得更高的学术成果。