Enacting customers—Marketing discourse and organizational practice

SummaryThis paper seeks to (A) contribute to a theoretical understanding of the organizational enactment of the customer and (B) illustrate how customers are enacted in two public industries: public housing and public transport. Empirically three instances of enactment are attended to within the two industries: customer rhetoric, operational procedures, and the physical customer environment.The study shows how the customer emerges as an open object of managerial knowledge, influenced by contingencies present in and around the organizations. The study explicates the customer's role in organizational practice by bringing forward the dual function of reduction (of complex contingencies) and projection (of established organizational conditions) exercised when the customer of discourse is translated and enacted. It also questions the hegemonic/universal assumptions about customer orientation found in critical and managerial text, respectively.