The Customer Centric Leadership Initiative promotes thought leadership and ongoing inquiry among scholars, students, business leaders and regulators to address the evolving marketing and customer engagement challenges inherent in an omnichannel, transparent and hyperconnected marketplace through education, research and outreach.
Every organization has friction, and in order to achieve long-term growth, you must be actively seeking out and identifying friction points.
September 30, 2021 | By Andy Murray
Customers look for cohesiveness in their buyer’s journey, so a unified, connected voice should be identifiable in each customer interaction.
September 7, 2021 | By Andy Murray
Are you listening to your customers?
August 7, 2021 | By Andy Murray
Are all members of your business working to create a well-rounded customer experience?
August 7, 2021 | By Andy Murray
On this episode of It’s a Customer’s World podcast, host Andy Murray continues his conversation with Kevin Ervin Kelley.
August 4, 2021
On this episode of It’s a Customer’s World podcast, host Andy Murray speaks with Kevin Ervin Kelley, principal and co-founder of Shook Kelley, a strategy and design firm based in Charlotte and Los Angeles.
August 4, 2021
On this bonus episode of It’s a Customer’s World podcast, host Andy Murrary invites Paco Underhill, founder and strategic advisor for Envirosell and author of Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping to answer University of Arkansas Walton College professor Molly Rapert’s marketing students' questions.
May 25, 2021
On this bonus episode of It’s a Customer’s World podcast, host Andy Murrary invites Paco Underhill, founder and strategic advisor for Envirosell and author of Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping to answer University of Arkansas Walton College professor Molly Rapert’s marketing students' questions.
May 10, 2021
The role of the chief customer officer – or other similarly titled c-suite executive positions – is relatively new in the corporate world, so there’s still debate over the position’s value.
May 7, 2021
A customer data warehouse is exactly what it sounds like— a giant, digital storage unit full of all the data you’ve collected on your customers.
April 9, 2021 | By Andy Murray
Companies with a customer-centric mindset need to evaluate where and how customers interact with them and make sure they have a one sign-on approach that is seamless and friction-free.
April 7, 2021 | By Andy Murray
On this bonus episode of It's a Customer's World Podcast, Andy Murray welcomes Kevin Roberts, author of Lovemarks and the previous CEO of Saatchi and Saatchi, to answer some of Marketing Professor Molly Rapert's students' questions about Lovemarks, marketing, life, and career choices.
April 5, 2021
In this final episode, Andy hosts a special interview with four students from Sam M Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas to listen to their key takeaways from this season.
March 29, 2021
On this episode of It’s a Customer’s World podcast, host Andy Murray speaks with Sarah Friar, CEO of Nextdoor, the neighborhood app.
March 22, 2021
Host Andy Murray interviews Steve Dennis, a consultant, keynote speaker, and author focused on retail growth and innovation. Steve has been named a top global retail influencer by multiple organizations, and his thoughts on the future of shopping are regularly shared through his role as a Forbes senior contributor.
March 15, 2021
In this episode, Andy speaks with Brenda Malloy, president of Herbert Mines Associates.
March 8, 2021
Host Andy Murray interviews Dr. Nick Fine, a user-experience researcher and designer with twenty years of experience in digital — in both agency and client-side roles.
March 1, 2021
In this episode, Rishad and Andy discuss the 10 characteristics that connect the customer and consumer as human beings, how the CMO role is changing, and the three most important questions people should ask themselves about data.
February 22, 2021
In this episode of “It’s a Customer’s World,” host Andy Murray is joined by founder and CEO of The Marketing Academy, Sherilyn Shackell.
February 15, 2021
In this episode, Paco and Andy discuss the importance of observation and understanding the customer experience, knowledge that can be gained by visiting other countries, and more!
February 8, 2021
Continuing in the conversation, Andy and Larry turn to the topic of agility, and Larry describes the role and challenges of becoming agile, the related need for speed, and the role of creativity.
February 1, 2021
Wendy is known as an innovator of shopper insights, and her goal is to get executives out of their ivory towers to meet shoppers on the shopping floor.
January 25, 2021
The conversation begins with Jeff detailing his excitement about the customer experience’s potential to drive growth. Through brand marketing, Jeff found that one way to strengthen a brand’s influence was to curate customer interactions.
January 18, 2021
Renowned marketer, thought leader, and author Jim Stengel, takes on these questions and more in episode 2 of It’s a Customer’s World podcast. Jim is the president of the Jim Stengel Company, host of “The CMO Podcast,” and bestselling author of “Grow.”
January 11, 2021
In this first episode of a twelve-episode series, Andy Murray speaks with Matt Waller, the dean of the Sam M. Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas. Matt Waller is a known business leader and writer.
January 4, 2021
Procter & Gamble’s decision to open an office in Fayetteville, Arkansas, in 1987 was a seminal moment in the history of corporate retail, but it also became a catalyst for changes that, among many other things, have helped shape and transform the Sam M. Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas.
August 20, 2020 | By Stephen Caldwell
Andy Murray is a subject matter expert and thought leader in retail and shopper marketing. He has extensive leadership experience through senior roles as SVP of Marketing at Walmart, Chief Customer Officer of Asda UK, as well as founding several startups including ThompsonMurray, Saatchi and Saatchi X, Mercury 11, and most recently, BigQuest.
August 19, 2020
Today the customer is in control and how companies interact and engage customers’ expectations requires a re-thinking of traditional silos, technology and ways of working across marketing, customer care, omnichannel shopping and product management.
New conversations and thinking is required to adapt agile, customer-centric organization and business models to meet the evolving customer expectations. Students entering today’s business environment will be faced with a broader set of challenges that cross multiple disciplines.
Walton College is uniquely positioned to lead and convene the conversations and research that will result in a more prepared graduate and more capable organizations
Andy Murray is a subject matter expert and thought leader in retail/shopper marketing. He has extensive leadership experience through senior roles as SVP of Marketing at Walmart, Chief Customer Officer of Asda UK, as well as founding several startups including ThompsonMurray, Saatchi and Saatchi X, Mercury 11, and most recently, BigQuest. BigQuest’s mission is to help teams and individuals develop a compelling quest that drives growth, professionally and personally. Andy’s own quest has taken him back to Fayetteville, Arkansas, as the Founder and Executive Chair of the Customer Centric Leadership Initiative.
I’m really excited to be leading this initiative in collaboration with faculty, students and industry.
Connecting with customers today in ways that enhance the customer experience, drives growth and works at scale has never been more complex but also has never been more important.
In our quest to improve the customer experience, we’ll explore all facets of emerging technologies and best practices of industry practitioners and educators.
From my experience in working in CPG, agencies and retailers, I’ve never failed to learn something new about how to connect with customers when diverse parties come together to explore how to best serve customers.
Andy Murray
Founder and Executive Chair, Customer Centric Leadership Initiative
Founder, bigQuest
Chair, Asda Foundation
Associate Dean of the Walton College of Business
Dr. Williams leads Walton College units that connect to the business community. These units include executive education and several outreach centers. He led the founding and development of the McMillon Innovation Studio and Walton College at 2nd & Main in Downtown Little Rock.
Department Chair and Professor, Department of Marketing
Dr. Murray teaches in the undergraduate program, the full-time MBA program, the managerial MBA program, and the executive MBA program in Shanghai, China. His research focuses on critical marketing, interpretive consumer research, and the philosophy of science.
University Professor, Department of Economics
Dr. Farmer received her Ph.D. at Duke University in Economics before becoming a professor at the University of Arkansas. Her research has been published in several journals and publications including Review of Law and Economics and Journal of Population Economics.
Assistant Professor, Department of Nursing
In one of the more difficult customer experience fields, Cara Osborne is a leader when it comes to customer experience in the healthcare industry. Cara has spent time overseas with "Midwives of Haiti" training others on becoming midwives.
University Professor, Department of Management
Dr. Rosen's research broadly considers how work-life experiences affect the well-being, attitudes, and performance of organizational members. His research has also focused on methodological questions pertaining to the measurement and modeling of psychological constructs. His research has appeared in outlets such as the Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Management, and others.
University Instructor, Department of Accounting
Katie Terrell has taught students around the world, including at Soochow University in China, University College Dublin in Ireland, and Duoc UC, a branch of the Catholic University of Chile. She is a member of the American Accounting Association and has published a Statement on Management Accounting for the Institute of Management Accountants on managing organizational change in operational change initiatives.
Associate Professor, Department of Marketing
Dr. Rapert teaches in the area of Marketing Management and Global Consumers. She is passionate about teaching, incorporating the unique approach of a reading-based, seminar-style undergraduate course which is designed in collaboration with her Advisory Board of twenty executives. Dr. Rapert also serves as the Director of the Walton College of Business Center for Teaching Effectiveness and served as a member of the Board of Directors for the Arkansas Alumni Association and the Walton College Alumni Society, among many other service activities.
Assistant Professor, Department of Finance
Before becoming a professor at the University of Arkansas, Tim Riley spent two years as a financial economist at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission where he worked on mutual fund liquidity regulation. Tim’s work has been featured by national media outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, Institutional Investor, and Morningstar.
David D. Glass Endowed Chair and Distinguished Professor, Department of Information Systems
Dr. Grover has published extensively in the information systems field, with over 400 publications, 250 of which are in major refereed journals. Over ten recent articles have ranked him among the top four researchers globally based on the number of publications in the top IS journals, as well as citation impact. Dr. Grover has an h-index of 91 and around 38,000 citations on Google Scholar.
Associate Professor, Supply Chain Management
Rodney W. Thomas is Director of the Undergraduate Supply Chain Management Program and an Associate Professor of Supply Chain Management in the Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas. His research interests focus on behavioral aspects of supply chain management.
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