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Peter Drucker, the historical and essential author of management, was one of the first to approach the concept of marketing in the early 1950s. He emphasized that marketing is not a separate and specific function of the company, but a global approach of the company from the customer’s point of view. In this sense, the marketing concept is close to a specific corporate culture based on a set of shared values and beliefs that put the customer at the heart of the company (Deshpandé and Webster 1989). Today, it is easier to speak of a marketing perspective as opposed, for example, to a product or production perspective that focuses more on the company’s offer and its capabilities.

By holding marketing accountable for the return on investment of its actions, the company and its shareholders have pushed it to focus on and value two major assets: the customer and the brand. Customer equity, defined as the sum of a customer’s lifetime values, and brand equity, are now recognized as key elements in the evaluation of a company. In B2B environments in general and service environments in particular, it is possible to hypothesize that customer equity plays a more important role than brand equity¹⁴.