In the article "Customer Driven Benchmarking" by the authors spoke about customer driven benchmarking and the importance of it to the success of businesses. Companies can identify the standards that they need to set with their products & services to ensure that they are at least keeping up with the Joneses of their competition. The author's goal in this article was to see exactly how customer driven benchmarking will lead to the success of companies and the methods that companies can use to achieve this benchmarking.

The way that they analyzed this information was by doing extensive research on information that was already provided by previous scholars. The authors then decided to look into customers that were already existing and experienced to evaluate what they seen as the basis for a certain type of product or service. The reason the authors chose to use experience customers is because of the value that experience customers give to a company. The fact that they have shop with the company or brand for as long as they have means that they have extensive knowledge and experience with the products that those companies offers therefore becoming a mouthpiece for the company if they are satisfied. The article says that these customers will give knowledge to new customers about the products and also recommend them to different products that they frequently use themselves. These customers also know what they want in the products that these companies use. They know their choice of style, their preference of color and their presence of taste. These customers are the long-term, loyal customers that companies long for when offering a product.

With the market and market preference changing the way that it always does, companies must relies on these experienced customers to transition them to what is more popular at the moment in time.

Upon their conducted research, they found that using the experience customers as tools to figure out benchmarks is actually very reliable. They found that picking the brain of these customers can actually lead to advances in technology as well as the enhancement of the overall product and its benefits. These customers allow companies to identify flaws in their production or their services and can be responsible for providing companies with solutions on how they can alleviate the flaw and become more productive.

Companies realizing these benchmarks and how to apply them to their own company can lead them to continue to have a sustainable company and keep up with the competition.

According to the article, companies like Apple, BMW, Boeing, ExxonMobil, Motorola, Xerox and the Ritz-Carlton are companies that have successfully uses the technique of benchmarking to grow their company to the levels are they are today. Each of these companies have used other companies as a benchmark to ensure that their products meet the basis of quality and standards and find ways to to use these benchmarks to exceed the customers' expectations thus allowing them the opportunity to make a competitive advantage.

Other companies can benefit from this strategy by finding their long lasting and experienced customers and utilizing them to establish customer driven benchmarks which could allow them to then expand creating a competitive advantage for their company as well.