On 7th October 2025, FlexMR hosted the second Customer Salience Summit at RSA House, London. FlexMR CEO, Paul Hudson, was joined by a range of speakers from the customer insight and marketing industries to discuss the gap between organisational decision-makers and their customers.
In an article published on Research Live, entitled ‘Focus more on understanding business decisions, conference hears’ - , Liam Kay-McClean captured the key points raised by Paul Hudson, as he introduced the Customer Salience Summit.
Balancing Customer and Business Focus
Liam highlighted Paul’s argument about the gap between business’ perception of the value of customer centricity to their brand, and the role it actually plays in the organisation: “To be truly customer-centric requires more than just customer understanding,” said Hudson. “It requires us to connect decision makers to customers in a way that is just not happening today.
“On its own, a great insight doesn’t change the business; it is how that is socialised across the organisation that will dictate your success.”
Hudson said that this issue meant a renewed focus on decision-making processes in businesses was required, citing data from Forrester Research in 2022 that showed 48% of business decisions use data in their decisions, adding: “The other 52%, I can only assume, are ideas, hunches and personal assumptions; that means one in two decisions take no note of the customer. That’s the beginning of our problem.”
He went on to say: We understand how consumers make decisions; we don’t understand how businesses make decisions. We understand what happens at the point of purchase; what we don’t understand is what happens at the point of decision.
“My contention is to stop being obsessed with the customer, let’s obsess about the decision internal to the organisation as well. We need to redress that balance; we need to understand how that gap gets bridged. Customer understanding does not lead to influencing decisions.”
In the article, Liam also recounted key arguments from other speakers at the event, including Jane Frost CBE, CEO of the Market Research Society, and Yuliia Krupenko, ex-marketing lead at pet insurance firm Waggel. Read Liam’s full article to discover more.
About Research Live
Research Live is the world's leading source of industry news, opinions, special reports and feature articles for market and social researchers, data analysts and consumer insight professionals. Covering the latest trends and techniques from behavioural economics to big data analytics, as well as hot topics like polling and privacy. The publication is operated by the Market Research Society.
