Enacting customers–—Marketing discourse andorganizational practice

Markus Fellesson *

CTF Service Research Center and SAMOT, Karlstad University, SE-651 88 Karlstad, Sweden

Scandinavian Journal of Management (2011) 27, 231—242

KEYWORDSCustomer orientation;Marketing discourse;Power/knowledge;Marketing practice;Public housing;Public transport

Summary This paper seeks to (A) contribute to a theoretical understanding of the organiza-tional enactment of the customer and (B) illustrate how customers are enacted in two publicindustries: public housing and public transport. Empirically three instances of enactment areattended to within the two industries: customer rhetoric, operational procedures, and thephysical 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 thecustomer’s role in organizational practice by bringing forward the dual function of reduction (ofcomplex contingencies) and projection (of established organizational conditions) exercised whenthe customer of discourse is translated and enacted. It also questions the hegemonic/universalassumptions about customer orientation found in critical and managerial text, respectively.# 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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Introduction

Marketing has evolved from a specialist subfield into an all-encompassing management discourse with ambitions to gov-ern most aspects of both private and public organizations(Brownlie & Hewer, 2007; Brownlie, Saren, Wensley, & Whit-tington, 1999; Skalen, Fougere, & Fellesson, 2008). In fact,‘‘marketing has become the soul of the corporation’’(Deleuze, 1992: 6). The customer is central to themanagerialphilosophy of marketing (John, 2003; Vargo & Lusch, 2004),as well as to related prescriptive disciplines such as ServiceManagement (Berry & Parasuraman, 1991; Gronroos, 2007;Schneider & Bowen, 1995) and Quality Management (Deming,1986; Lengnick-Hall, 1996; Oakland, 1989), and hence also to

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +46 54 700 10 00; fax: +46 54 83 65 52.E-mail address: markus.fellesson@kau.se.

0956-5221/$ — see front matter # 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reservedoi:10.1016/j.scaman.2011.03.002

our understanding of organizational life. Through the ideathat organizations should be shaped according to, e.g.‘oriented towards’, customer needs and requirements, mar-keting has brought the customer into the very nexus oforganizational practice. It is the customer’s function androle in this practice that is the theme of this article. Speci-fically, the aim of the paper is to contribute to research intohow marketing is practiced by (A) contributing to a theore-tical understanding of the organizational enactment of thecustomer and (B) illustrating how customers are enacted intwo public industries: public housing and public transport.The background to this aim is elaborated on below.

Organizational aspects of this orientation towards thecustomer have been critically analyzed and debated fromseveral theoretical positions, including various formulationsinspired by discourse analysis (cf. Alvesson & Willmott, 1996;Du Gay, 1991; Gabriel & Lang, 1995; Hackley, 2003; Korc-zynski & Ott, 2004; Morgan, 1992, 2003; Rosenthal, Peccei, &Hill, 2001; Skalen et al., 2008). This literature has demon-

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232 M. Fellesson

strated the discursive nature of both the customer herselfand the managerial interpretations of her, thereby contribut-ing valuable insights into the organizational consequences ofmarketing. It has also been argued that the definition of thecustomer constitutes contested terrain (Gabriel & Lang,1995), indicating that the content of the customer conceptshould not be taken for granted. However, most of theseanalyses share a preoccupation with the customer as anabstracted, discursive subject position (cf. Dean, 1999),offering little detailed understanding of how the customerof discourse is actually enacted in day-to-day organizationalpractice.

When enacted, the customer is given a concrete, articu-lated substance in the form of vocabularies and analogies,organizational arrangements and patterns of action, andvarious physical manifestations (Czarniawska & Joerges,1996; Douglas, 1986; Greenwood & Hinings, 1996; Latour,1986). It is through such carriers the customer of discoursespreads between organisations and eventually integrates intothe complex material and immaterial networks that consti-tute local organising. It is also these objectifications (ratherthan the abstract idea of the customer) that are confrontedwith other aspects of the social life in and around organisa-tions.

The integration of the discursive customer into localconditions can be analyzed as a process of translation (cf.Czarniawska & Joerges, 1996; Latour, 1986). In the transla-tion, both form and content may be altered, thereby creatingtension between the customer as an ideology, or theory, andthe customer as an aspect of organizational practice. Thisprovides a strong argument for explicitly investigating notonly what a customer is, according to discourse, but alsowhat eventually emerges when discourse is enacted in prac-tise (cf. Hasselbladh & Kallinikos, 2000).

Studying customer discourse through the empirical lens ofsituational practice adds to the understanding of how thecustomer is constructed as a discursive subject and how andtowhat extent this subject influences organizational practice(see Rosenthal & Peccei, 2007 and Skalen & Fougere, 2007 fortwo examples of studies applying such approaches). In parti-cular, studies of situations where the presence of customersis not naturalized and the logic of customer orientation is notself-evident might provide valuable insights. The presence offactors such as competing traditions, complex stakeholderinterests, and inflexible operational conditions marked byeconomies of scale and resource inertia is likely to addchallenges to the translation process as they are potentiallycontradicting the rationality customer orientation. Attend-ing to situations where customers are enacted despite suchchallenges might help clarifying both the basic character andthe limits of the customer idea of marketing discourse.

The widespread adoption of marketing ideals in the publicsector during the 90s and 00s (Aberbach & Christensen, 2005;Osborne & Gaebler, 1992) offers plenty of examples of suchsituations. Studying customers in ‘‘public’’ industries, albeitsomewhat counterintuitive, also helps distinguishing market-ing-as-(organizational-) practice, i.e. the managerial logic ofmarketing, from the market-making-practices producing ofthe overall market structure (Kjellberg & Helgesson, 2007:142, cf. Cochoy, 1998). The sectors of public transport andpublic housing, where several programs have been launchedwhich explicitly or implicitly promote the customer idea and

the ideals of the market, face all the challenges mentionedabove. The realization of these programs has therefore thepotential to bring forward key aspects of customers as apivotal cornerstone of managerial marketing, as well as ofhow ‘‘customers’’ — as an abstract discursive notion — areenacted within organizational practice.

In the next section of the paper, the discursive characterof the customer in mainstreammarketing is outlined, and theanalytical concepts of ‘translation’ and ‘objects of knowl-edge’ are introduced in order to open up the enactment ofdiscourse to situational conditions. There then follows adiscussion about how the data for the study has been col-lected and analyzed. Next, empirical illustrations are pre-sented of the organizational enactment of the customer inthe two industries mentioned above, public housing andpublic transport. Following previous research, threeinstances of the enactment have been dealt with customerrhetoric, operational procedures, and the physical customerenvironment. In ‘‘Discussion’’ section, two aspects of how thecustomer is enacted in practice are elaborated on; namely,how the customer reduces complexity and projects existingorganizational conditions. It is also argued that the discursiveformulation of the customer as an ‘‘open’’ (i.e. underdeter-mined) object of knowledge greatly contributes to its suc-cessful inclusion in organizational practice. Finally, thetheoretical and empirical conclusions of the paper are sum-marized, and their implications for future research commen-ted upon.

Customers, organizations, and discourse

According to Foucault (1981, 1997), government (‘the con-duct of conduct’) in late modernity is increasingly beingcharacterized by the creation of regulated fields of freedomwhere self-regulating actors adjust themselves to fit thenorms of conduct established in the specific field throughsystems of expert knowledge and language (cf. Rose, 1999).The result is the formation of coherent systems of ‘power/knowledge’ (Foucault, 1981), whereby the world is con-structed, governed, and enacted on the basis of certainclaims of knowledge. It is these systems that constitutediscourse and ‘institute actors together with their domainsof action and self-regulating rules of the game’ (Hasselbladh& Bejerot, 2007: 176). Specifically, discourse provides a wayof talking about a particular subject, thereby constructing itin a certain way, in addition to providing the technologies andprocedures for performing not only the subject itself, butalso agencies who act on the subject (Dean, 1999; Rose,1996).

In marketing discourse, the customer emerges as one suchsubject, of key importance not only to how the organizationshould relate to its environment, but also to the functioningof the organization itself and its employees. On a founda-tional level, the firm should be ‘doing the things that willmake people want to do business with it’ (Levitt, 1960). Thismakes the customer someone to interact with in value-creating exchange relationships (Bagozzi, 1975; Morgan &Hunt, 1994, and someone to investigate and adapt to throughstrategies of customer- and market-orientation (Hunt &Lambe, 2000; John, 2003; Kohli & Jaworski, 1990). Thecustomer thus constitutes a central nodal point of marketing

Marketing discourse and organizational practice 233

discourse, around which a substantial part of its power/knowledge system is structured (cf. Laclau & Mouffe,1985; Skalen et al., 2008). Although it has been said that,as a business philosophy, market-orientation needs toembrace more than the customer (notably competitors onthe market, cf. Narver & Slater, 1990; Shapiro, 1988); theprimacy of the customer as an organizational imperative hasbeen forcefully argued for (Deshpande and Webster, 1989;Hunt & Morgan, 1995; Webster, 1994). At least rhetorically,‘the customer is king’, a sovereign whose will is law to theorganization-subject (Du Gay & Salaman, 1992).

The customer’s sovereignty is conditional, however, as sheis also expected to fulfill his/her role of sovereign in a certainway. In themanagerial literature, there are several accounts,albeit often fragmented, of what is expected of the customerin order for her to function as the raison d’etre of theorganization (Drucker, 1964). First and foremost, in orderto engage in a market exchange with the organization, he/she is expected to present needs and preferences that can bematched by product offerings, in accordance with the mar-keting concept (Levitt, 1960). Following developments inquality management and satisfaction research, he/she is alsoexpected to function as the ultimate judge of the quality ofthe organization’s performance (cf. Deming, 1986) by eval-uating to what extent his/her expectations have been met.Especially when it comes to services, he/she is ascribed afurther role as a co-producer (Berry & Parasuraman, 1991;Bitner, Faranda, Hubbart, & Zeithaml, 1997; Schneider &Bowen, 1995). This latter assumption has recently beenextended to all consumption situations, by means of theconcepts of value co-creation and value-in-use (Vargo &Lusch, 2004; Vargo et al., 2008).

Taken together, all of this makes the customer of mar-keting discourse both a rational actor — within her ownbounded rationality (Howard & Seth, 1969), encompassinga multitude of values (Seth et al., 1991) beyond the merestriving for economic utility associated with neo-classicaleconomics — and a potent one endowed with a consider-able imperative of power over the organization. Further,and this is what makes the power/knowledge associatedwith the customer important from an organizational per-spective, a functional symmetry is assumed regarding thecustomer—organization relationship: the needs and wishes,quality evaluations, and co-creating activities of the cus-tomer correspond directly and/or indirectly with the pro-duct/service being provided by the organization (Marion,2006), which is in turn linked to both strategic decisionsand the organization of operative work. In doing so, thecustomer is framed not only as a forceful actor in theorganization’s environment, but also as a provider ofrationality for organizational action, and as a foundationfor the subjectivity of the customer-oriented organizationand organization member.

Herein lies an important basis for the power/knowledge ofmarketing discourse. The ascribed customer capacities makeknowledge of the customer a key organizational asset (Hack-ley, 2003, cf. Narver & Slater, 1990; Kohli & Jaworski, 1990) asthe organization needs to know what the ‘‘king’’ wants fromit, and whether he is pleased with its performance so far. Thedeeper the knowledge and the better able the organization isto adapt to it — the better will be the organization’s chancesof receiving the sovereign’s approval.

By providing technologies for gaining and acting on suchknowledge, the managerial discourse of marketing contri-butes to constructing autonomous, active, and calculatingagents (Callon, 1998: 3), with clear interest being focused onthe object of themarket transaction, i.e. the product (p. 25).This is not to say that the customer is conceived of as one-dimensional, socially and culturally disentangled, or evenconsistently defined. As argued by Gabriel and Lang (1995),the consumer is both multifaceted and contested. Theachievement of marketing discourse is that it makes thecomplex embedded consumer at least partly and temporarilyknowledgeable, and thereby manageable: ‘‘Thus consumersare knowable, limited entities the characteristics of whichcan be captured in the same way as can the characteristics ofnatural phenomena’’ (Morgan, 1992: 140).

Performing discourse–—The situatedcustomer

The discussion in the previous section articulated an idea-lized (albeit complex) customer who is predicated onmarket-ing discourse and decoupled from situational interactions andcontingencies. This is characteristic of Foucauldian-inspiredanalyses, which tend to focus on how discursive forms pro-mote certain subjectivities and modes of instrumental actionin their own terms (cf. Brownlie & Hewer, 2007; Hasselbladh& Bejerot, 2007; Rose, 1999; Townley, 1994). Discourse isthus studied in terms of possible subject positions (Dean,1999, Skalen et al., 2008), as if it would work as intendedwith regard to managerial recipes and other concrete man-ifestations of discursive power/knowledge.

However, power/knowledge is rarely practiced in avacuum, rather in settings of structures, processes, andenvironments that bring symbolic, instrumental, linguistic,theoretical, and organizational components into the picture(cf. Hardy, Palmer, & Nelson, 2000). This suggests the totalcolonization of organizations and identities by the customerand the associated discursive regime that has been suggestedby some critical accounts (see, for example, Du Gay & Sala-man, 1992 and Du Gay, 1991, 2004 on the power of ‘Enter-prise Culture’), and which is also actively promoted inmanagerialistic texts (cf. Gronroos, 2007; John, 2003 wherethe supremacy of the customer is forcefully argued for),should not be taken for granted.

When the customer of discourse is enacted through orga-nizational practice, this is not only an expression of market-ing discourse, it is also an expression of practice itself, and ofthe local context informing and shaping this practice. Theresulting customer, albeit derived from discourse, is thusinfluenced by the situation in which enactment takes place.In comparison to the abstract customer embedded in market-ing discourse, the enacted customer is therefore likely to beboth negotiated and highly contingent (cf. Sturdy, 2000;Hardy et al., 2000).

The impact of situational conditions (including the pre-sence of competing discourses, see Laine & Vaara, 2007) onthe practical enactment of the power/knowledge envisionedby discourse is sometimes acknowledged (cf. Rose, 1999;Skalen et al., 2008; Dean, 1999), but more seldom elaboratedon. This might lead to an over-determined view of organiza-tional actors (Brownlie & Hewer, 2007; Rosenthal, 2004) and

234 M. Fellesson

an overrating of the power dimension of marketing power/knowledge.

One possible way of avoiding this and nuancing the impactof discourse and its power/knowledge is to regard the spreadand adoption of discourse as a translation process, ratherthan as the diffusion of a social, non-negotiable ‘‘object’’(Czarniawska & Joerges, 1996). The term translation is usedhere beyond its purely linguistic meaning and encompasses‘‘displacement, drift, invention, mediation, the creation of anew link that did not exist before andmodifies in part the twoagents’’ (Latour, 1993: 6), i.e. both the translator and dis-course itself. The concept thus has the capacity to comprise‘‘the relationship between humans and ideas, ideas andobjects and humans and objects’’ (Czarniawska & Joerges,1996: 24).

A further tool for analyzing how translation processesmight turn an idea (e.g. about customers) into somethingelse is offered by the theories of knowledge production workof Knorr Cetina (1997, 1999). She develops the notion of‘epistemic cultures’ in order to denote the intrinsic andmutually constituting relationship between epistemicobjects, epistemic subjects, and processes of knowledgeproduction. Of particular relevance to the present study isher suggestion that epistemic subjects (e.g. the customer-oriented organization and its employees, i.e. the producersof knowledge within the epistemic culture promoted bymarketing discourse) and epistemic objects (the customer,i.e. the phenomenon that is to be investigated by the sub-jects) are performed as inseparable parts of the same ‘epis-temic machinery’ (Knorr Cetina, 1999).

A focus on knowledge production and reproduction pro-vides a vehicle for capturing how context might influence thepractical enactment of discourse. What is supplied by mar-keting discourse is a framework for constructing an epistemicobject, the customer. The content of this object is, by itsdiscursive definition, open and invites observation, enquiry,and interpretation (Knorr Cetina, 1997). Not only are suchactivities made possible, they are also actually required bymarketing discourse as the organization is prompted to learnwhat its customers want (Kohli & Jaworski, 1990; Slater &Naver, 1998).

‘‘Learning about the customer’’ opens up the customer ofdiscourse to contextual and structural contingencies, includ-ing present-day culture and attitudes, professional ethos,etc., as these resources are drawn upon in the learningprocess to render the customer comprehensible and mean-ingful (Peccei & Rosenthal, 2000; Sturdy, 2000). Other dis-cursive regimes are present which are typical of modernorganizations, as well as technological conditions and admin-istrative/bureaucratic routines, not least, which are likely tomitigate and balance the interpretation and impact of thecustomer (cf. Rosenthal, 2004). In other words, the governingtechnologies of marketing are likely to intervene in whatalready exists rather than to constitute an independentformulation of practice. This by no means reduces theirimportance for practice however: ‘‘Giving name to what isalready being done is a major step in history making: now weknow what we have been doing all along and we will be ableto tell the story. [. . .] Matching ideas to actions will changeboth, but this is a part of the translation process.’’ (Czar-niawska & Joerges, 1996: 40). This provides a strong argu-ment for critically studying marketing as a managerial

practice concerned with the organization itself as much asthe relationship with external actors.

Studying situated customers–—Researchdesign

In the preceding sections, the customer was discussed as adiscursive phenomenon, present in academic marketing lit-erature and in normative accounts targeted at practitioners.A fundamental assumption in critical discourse analyses isthat language and discourse perform, rather than representthe world. As a consequence, language use and its effects areplaced at the center of enquiry, enabling the study of howdiscourse structures, arranges and naturalizes social practice(Alvesson & Karreman, 2000). This is certainly the case in thepresent study as well. However, in the discussion above, thehegemonic capacity to fully determine subjects and objectsin the social world sometimes ascribed to discourse wasquestioned and it was argued that discourse is subject totranslational processes that partly alter the content of dis-course.

The empirical section of the paper is designed to illustrateand elaborate on this argument by highlighting how thecustomer of discourse emerges in organizational practice.The organizational enactment of the customer is studied intwo industries, public transport and public housing. Bothindustries represent instances where market-orientationand customer focus have been drawn on but without thepublic ethos completely giving way to the market logic. Bothindustries have also seen substantial programs aimed atimplementing the customer idea throughout their sectors(see Alexandersson, 2010; White, 2008 for studies of publictransport and Borelius & Wennerstrom, 2009 and Fellesson,2001 for studies of public housing). Although both casesillustrate the expansion of marketing discourse into thepublic sector, the case industries also exhibit several inherentchallenges to the customer idea and the logic of customer-orientation, including competing traditions, complex stake-holder interests, inflexible operational conditions, andresource inertia. This enables the cases to bring forwardaspects of the customer enactment that are hard to observein more mundane settings (cf. Hartley, 2004).

Empirical data has been drawn from several completedand ongoing research projects conducted by the authorwherein the research aims relate to programs of customer-and market-orientation in the two industries. This hasenabled analytical comparisons to be made both longitudin-ally, within each case, and cross-sectional, between the twoindustries (cf. Yin, 1994). Recorded and transcribed personalinterviews with management and staff provide the bulk ofthe empirical material; however, notes from workshops andfield visits, as well as various documents produced by theorganizations studied, have also been utilized. The inter-views lasted for about 1 h each and took departure in therespondents own day-to-day work. All respondents were alsoasked to comment on visions, customer orientation strate-gies, current changes, product offerings, and organizationalarrangements. Semi-structured interview guides where usedto ensure that all topics where covered, but the interviewsthemselves were carried out in a conversational style, nor-mally at the respondents place of work.

Marketing discourse and organizational practice 235

The public housing study encompasses nine municipalcompanies engaged in a large-scale renewal program aimedat making public housing customer-driven. Unlike publichousing in many other countries, the Swedish municipalhousing companies not only offer housing to socially disad-vantaged groups, but also to all citizens. Rents are regulated,but not subsidized, and the companies operate on a com-mercial basis, albeit with an explicit societal ethos. At thetime of the study, the public housing sector included about22% of the total housing stock and was facing increasedcompetition from other landlords, as well as from thosebuying their homes privately. The research project was con-ducted between 1998 and 2002, with a follow-up study in2009. Ninety-six employees (ranging from operatives to top-management) were interviewed.

The public transport industry is illustrated by drawing ontwo projects conducted within a major research programinvestigating service- and market-orientation within thesector. Regional public transport in Sweden is organized bylocal public transport authorities (PTAs) who are responsiblefor the planning and procurement of transportation servicesvia public tendering. Public subsidies are between 30 and 70%of the overall cost, but operations are, nonetheless, largelyorganized according to a business-driven model. Empiricaldata for the first project — concerned with public tenderingand business development — was gathered through a series of10 interviews and 2 workshops with managers and marketingspecialists from 3 PTAs and 4 commercial operators. Thesecond project, an in-depth study of a customer culturedevelopment project targeting the frontline staff of onemajor multinational transport operator encompassed 25interviews with frontline staff and first line managementas well as participant observations at 3 monthly managementmeetings. In the paper, the Stockholm Metro is used as themain illustrative example when it comes to the physicalservice setting of public transport.

The cases are analyzed and presented in a way thatdeliberately brings forward the substantive topic of the study(cf. Yin, 1981), i.e. the local enactment of the customerpromoted by marketing discourse. To capture the transla-tional effects the analysis has focused on elements of prac-tice where articulations of the customer idea has beennaturalized and stabilized into discursive moments (cf.Laclau & Mouffe, 1985) in the presence — and under theinfluence — of other discourses and possible alternativeformulations. In particular, instances of interdiscursivity,the drawing on competing discourses (Fairclough, 1992),and problematizations, the questioning of past and presentdiscursivemeanings (Dean, 1999; Foucault, 1981; Rose, 1996)have been sought for. However, it follows from the hegemonicnature of discourse and the naturalized character of discur-

Table 1 Capturing the situated customer.

Element Description

Organizational rhetoric How is the customer described andwhen referred to?

Operational procedures How is the customer imprinted inorganizational work?

The physical customerenvironment

How is the customer reflected in tfunction of the physical service en

sive articulations that such eclectic aspects of discursivepractice are seldom explicated in the articulations them-selves. Instead an approach to discourse analysis that paysattention not only to discourse itself but also to contextualand situational factors (Hardy et al., 2000, cf. Alvesson &Karreman, 2000) is required. That is, the analysis of discoursehas to comprise extra-discursive conditions of possibilities(Hook, 2001: 538) and not confine itself to merely readingtextual significations. The empirical section of the papertherefore integrates various direct expression of discoursewith interpretations based on other material from the above-mentioned studies of the two industries.

Following previous research (Rosenthal & Peccei, 2007),three elements or vehicles for enactment are specificallydealt with. Firstly, the language used was studied, e.g. therhetorical framing of the customer in terms of how he/she isdescribed and ascribed certain characteristics. Secondly,operational procedures (including policies and administra-tive technologies such as customer satisfaction survey instru-ments and quality management systems), relating to thecustomers and rendering them visible and meaningful tothe organization, provided additional data. Finally, thedesign and operation of the physical customer environmentalso provided cues regarding how the customer has beenenacted within the organizations. Contrary to some versionof discourse analysis (cf. Fairclough, 1992) a mutual relation-ship between discourse and materiality is thus appreciated(Hook, 2001: 540).

In the present study, the three elements were refined asfollows in order to highlight how the customer is enacted inthe two industries under investigation.

The structure in Table 1 invites to a rich and systematicrepresentation of how the customer is enacted in and throughorganizational practice. Below, the empirical material ispresented in accordance with this structure and interpretedusing the discourse analytical approach introduced above.The text is illustrated with quotes from the interviews andofficial documents.

Enacting customers

Organizational rhetoric

Customers play a key role in the companies’ visions andstrategies: however, since these are formulated in anabstract and rhetorical manner, the exact and practicalnature of this role is elusive. Instead, it is the abstractsovereign customer from marketing discourse, presentedabove, who is introduced to the organizational audience asa foundational imperative in the competitive market situa-

Operationalization

characterized References to customers in interviewsand strategic documents

formal Policies, contracts, administrativetechnologies, measures

he design andvironment?

Field visits to service settings (housingestates and metro stations)

236 M. Fellesson

tion of the companies. In particular, the idea that the key toorganizational success lies in understanding the customer (asan independent agent with needs and preferences) and indeveloping product-offerings that fulfill his/her needs ispresented as a comprehensive thought-structure which isdeemed appropriate and necessary by the companies.

The vision is to offer our customers housing adapted totheir needs, with a focus on variety and quality. (Housingcompany CEO)

At the housing companies, this interest in and acknowl-edgement of the customer and her needs is explicitly linkedto a reorientation of organizational strategy that is articu-lated in sharp contrast to previous ways of acting and thinkingwithin the organizations. As one housing official described it;‘‘It used to be that we decided and the tenants listened, nowit’s the other way round’’. This holds true for general atti-tudes towards the tenant as well as the design of the cus-tomer offerings.

It is necessary to get rid of this authoritative, ‘‘municipal’’attitude and start treating the tenants as customers.(Housing company district manager)

The new ideas are presented as a better, more efficient,and more up-to-date way of achieving the mission of thepublic housing sector; a mission which is thus partly re-appreciated. Old approaches to the operations of thecompanies are described as obsolete, bureaucratic, andcustomer-hostile. For example, the traditional reliance onsocial science and engineering is now negatively referredto as ‘‘expert thinking’’, leading companies astray fromwhat ‘‘people’’ (i.e. customers) really want. Instead,the companies have to listen to their customers to findout what the right strategy is for public housing in thefuture.

This means that the customer is associated with a (re-)writing of history whereby parts of the past are described asinferior and obsolete in comparison to the new ideas,whereby some of the old truths are questioned, and wherebyestablished conceptions of organizational identities are chal-lenged and dismissed. However, at the same time, the basicidentity of a public housing company is retained and honored.The customer-oriented public housing companies will remainpublic housing companies, not something else, and especiallynot pale copies of ‘‘ordinary’’ commercial real estate com-panies. Instead, the ‘‘public’’ character of the companies isbelieved to enable unique and attractive customer valuesthat can be drawn on when becoming oriented towards thecustomer.

Our customers feel that they are taken care of. We offerthem security. Our message is that we can solve allproblems in a caring and secure way. (Housing companymarketer)

For example, concepts of security and risk-reduction areoften used by companymanagers to describe the core of theircompanies’ customer offering and to contrast it with that oftheir competitors. Much of the work done by the housingcompanies is aimed at preventing social and technical dis-turbances to tenants’ lives or, if such disturbances havealready occurred, at minimizing their impact. This care-

taking, problem-fixing orientation is traceable to old publichousing ambitions of improving not only physical housingconditions but also tenants’ lives in general, by placinghousing issues in a social and political context. However,what was previously legitimized by politics and policy imple-mentation is now seen as customer-driven product develop-ment and quality assurance, i.e. activities to be undertakenwithin the framework of customer-orientation in order tomeet the extended needs of the customer.

In the public transport industry, similar tendencies arenoticeable, the rhetoric albeit less concerned with paradigmshifts and more concerned with a general theme of gradualdevelopment, aligning public transport with the customerlogic.

Public transport is a natural part of travel in a sustainablesociety — This is our vision. It means that public transportshall be so attractive and competitive that people chooseto travel with us as often as possible. The vision has beendeveloped with its basic starting point in the traffic policygoals. With a clear customer focus, we shall create valuefor our passengers.

The quotation comes from the sector’s joint vision docu-ment, aimed at doubling the market share of public transportby 2020 (see X2, 2010). In the same document, two mainconcerns about the present situation in the industry areraised:

(1) Lack of a customer perspective [encompassing] theentire door-to-door journey, i.e. each actor acts fromtheir own narrow perspective, leading to sub-optimiza-tion for the customer

(2) Lack of a comprehensive efficiency perspective, i.e.each actor seeks to render their own operations moreeffective, leading to sub-optimization of the industry asa whole

To resolve these problems, it is argued that all actors inthe sector should work together within an integrated andcoordinated public transport system. Notably this puts thePTAs (who are responsible for coordination and integration)at the heart of the customer-focused development of theindustry, partly at the expense of operators (who could claimto be closer to the customer and hence better positioned todevelop customer-oriented strategies). In fact, the visionwas developed on the initiative of the PTAs’ national associ-ation as a response to a government report suggesting de-regulation and increased competition would lead to anincreased customer focus.

At the same time, the customer and the associated man-agerial rationality are also being put forward by the PTAs asan argument against political governance. Once again, theargumentation relies on the implicit assumption that it is thePTAs who are in the best position to understand the sovereigncustomer, not the politicians or the operators. The customeris thus enrolled in order to sustain and legitimize establishedidentities as well as industry roles and power relations.

The tendency to accommodate existing practices withinthe discursive framework of the customer is also evident onthe operational level. For example, the fiercely enforcedregulations regarding the inspection of tickets, the preven-tion of trespass, and other functions of passenger control are

Marketing discourse and organizational practice 237

now being framed within a commercial relationship where itis natural for the customer to pay for the service and whereprocedures of control and inspection are naturalized as partof the customer offering. An example of how this is achievedis when several companies refer to ‘effective and correctticket inspection’ as a key sub-goal when ‘good customerservice’ is being defined in strategic documents. The sub-jugation of the traveler to bureaucratic control is henceframed as a customer value provided to, and (at leastimplicitly) requested by, the sovereign customer.

In both industries, the customer is thus drawn on in orderto promote the managerial rationalities favored within theorganization. This indicates that, although the customermight be sovereign inmarketing discourse, it is up tomanage-ment to construe the will of the customer, and to interpretwhat this means for the organization.

Operational procedures

Thereareplenty ofexamplesof howtechnologies ofmarketingdiscourse (e.g. customer surveys, cultural programs, theempowerment of frontline employees and coaching techni-ques) have been incorporated into the organizational practiceof public housingand transport.However, a closer examinationreveals that it is not necessarily the sovereign customer ofmarketing discourse that is enacted by the technologies. Forexample, several of the housing companies are using customersegmentation and targeting as strategic tools:

The company should develop housing offerings for up-scale living. We are too dependent on the low-incomemarket today. (Housing company technical manager)

The identification of high-end customer segments not cur-rently being targeted has had an impact on investment plans,with several exclusive projects having been initiated in thename of customer-orientation. Although this could be under-stood as a concession to the most sovereign of all customers(those who can back their discursive position with hard cash),and as an illustration of how the public sector is colonized bythe commercial thinking of marketing discourse, other inter-pretations are also possible, if one considers the concreteoutcomes of the strategies. The companies have a long historyof developing and applying state-of-the art innovations inarchitecture and construction technology in order to bothdefine and accommodate society’s housing needs. By referringtonewcustomer segments, ithasbeenpossible tomaintainandeven extend this operational logic. The ‘sovereign’ customer,hence, is once again subsumed into a techno/bureaucraticrationality already embedded in the identity of the companies.

At the housing companies, it is also noticeable how orga-nizational activities and outcomes are redefined as customerofferings. The above-mentioned framing of safety and care-taking as core customer value offerings in housing is oneexample, while the launch of elaborate systems where main-tenance and refurbishment become optional services isanother. The latter means the abandonment of fixed-intervalplans for replacing, for instance, kitchen appliances andwallpaper. Instead, tenants are offered a service wherebythese actions are applied at an earlier stage (at an extra costwhich is then added to their monthly rent), or postponed(with a compensatory rent reduction). What was once

defined as property maintenance thus becomes a custo-mer-oriented service offering:

We offer a choice programme, if youwant something extrayou pay for it, if you don’t want it you don’t have to pay.This is a good thing, because our housing offer is actuallyrather stereotyped. (Housing company janitor)

In public transport, new IT-based systems for ticketing andtravel information are discussed in terms of add-on servicesthat provide customers with extra value, in a similar way. In amore profound way, the practice of quality management hasalso introduced the technology of defining operationalaspects of public transport, e.g. punctuality and cleanliness,as product attributes that are deemed important to thecustomer.

They ask passengers what they think of the service. Aboutcleaning and how the traffic is working. It is percentagesand bar charts all over the place. . . (Transport operatorbus driver)

In both cases, the result is that company resources andactivities (old and new) are now directly related to the ideaof the customer. Once again, this might be interpreted as aconcession to the discursive imperative of the customer.However, from a power/knowledge perspective, the rela-tionship could very well work in the other direction as well, inthat the customer becomes, in fact, constructed through thevery measures that are supposed to accommodate his/herneeds. The customer becomes a reflection of the companies,‘wanting’ what the company wants him/her to want andevaluating what the company wants him/her to evaluate. Orto put it another way, the customer is enacted in accordancewith company operations, rather than the other way round.

Customer-related administrative technologies typical ofmarketing discourse are used by both industries, but areparticularly abundant among the public transport companieswhere satisfaction surveys, operative statistics, and so-called mystery shopper studies are all used on a regular basisto measure the respective operator’s performance. Thelatter, in particular, are interesting as they involve a con-tracted third party that explicitly performs the role of thecustomer while evaluating the service (cf. Fuller & Smith,1991). This is, in a sense, the ultimate form of marketingpower/knowledge and customer-based governance, as itrelies on ‘professional’ customers rather than consumers/citizens who might be unaware of, or might even resist, therole that they have been ascribed by marketing discourse.

I guess the mystery shopper studies are OK, we are in abusiness relationship and are supposed to deliver a speci-fied product. But sometimes we feel that the studies arenot really targeting what is important for the customerbut aspects deemed important for the transport authority,for example correct time stamps on tickets. (Transportoperator foreman)

However, in practice, these mystery shopper studiesmainly concern the inspection of pre-specified attributesof the service environment (cleanliness, information on bul-letin boards, etc.) and staff adherence to PTA tariffs andvalidation regulations, together with a few subjective butrather mechanical measures regarding how ‘the customer’

238 M. Fellesson

was treated by staff on site (e.g. was the customer indivi-dually greeted, was eye contact established, etc.). A similarattribute structure is used in customer surveys: pre-definedattributes describing the key features of the transport ser-vices are used to tap the opinions of the travelers.

Neither the mystery shopper nor the customer enactedthrough the surveys is thus very sovereign vis-a-vis theorganizational logic of the public transport system, ratherthey are expressions and reflections of it. The effect of this istwofold. Firstly, the traveler is reduced to a series ofmanage-able measures. Secondly, certain aspects of the organizationare legitimized as they are framed as customer needs/opi-nions. As was the case with security and public housing, acustomer is envisioned and enacted who focuses on thedimensions of the operations which are already embracedby the organization.

The discursive idea of the customer is also reflected in thecompanies’ organizational structures. At the housing com-panies, decentralization has been used as an organizingstrategy to create structures that are in line with the newcustomer-centric ideals promoted in the visions. The com-panies commonly view the decentralized structures as anatural consequence of the new customer-orientated stra-tegies, and as a necessary condition for their implementa-tion. Functional departments are being replaced by smallteams of care-takers and technicians stationed at housingestates, something which is believed to increase flexibilityand responsiveness to customer needs. Direct managerialsupervision is thus replaced by control which is directly orindirectly exerted by the customer and his/her needs, asdefined through the above-mentioned technologies. How-ever, there is also a firm belief that a strong local presence(notably not necessarily direct interference) has a positiveeffect as regards preventing unwanted customer behaviorsuch as littering, vandalism, and disruption. The sovereignhousing customer is thus subject to a form, albeit subtle, ofpanoptical control (Foucault, 1977).

At the PTAs, the situation is somewhat different. Foundedon the principles of public tendering, these companies arenot directly involved in the actual production of services.Instead, transport operators are contracted in to do the job.In these contracts, the customer is playing an increasinglycrucial role. While previous tenders mainly used price andobjective minimum quality standards as their main governingdevices, customer-related measures are now increasinglybeing relied on to assess performance, and even to provideincentives for improvements. The customer is thus beingused to structure the relationship between the PTA andthe operator, providing a focusing device for their respectiveefforts as well as a means of control and evaluation.

The physical customer environment

The physical layout of the service settings is an importantmeans of performing the ideal of the customer. In both thepublic housing and transport industries, shop-like servicecenters have been introduced in order to handle more com-plicated customer interactions. With local branches designedin a business-like fashion, it becomes natural for clients tofeel and behave like customers, and for employees to treatthem accordingly (cf. Rosenthal & Peccei, 2007). That is to

say, the ‘shop’ frames the tenants/passengers as sovereigncustomers who are encouraged to express their housing/transport needs and wants and to exercise their sovereignright to choose a suitable ‘product’, all within a business-likerelationship.

The ‘housing shop’ provides the interface towards thecustomer. The districts have a back-office function. (Hous-ing company sales officer)

However, the actual freedom of choice in the shop issubstantially restricted due to the limitations of the housingstock and the fixed nature of the transport system. Thecustomer entering the shop is thus only ‘free’ to choosewhat is available, and is guided towards adjusting his/herwants and needs in order to match the limited offeringsavailable. In practice, the provision of physical customer-fostering environments thus functions as a means of structur-ing variations in user-preferences and accommodating theheterogeneity of consumption under the constraints of a pre-existing, rationally organized production apparatus.

Then the company is working with a 60-year-product, it isa house standing there, which is not changing. (Housingcompany foreman)

Both industries are facing this conflict between individualconsumption preferences and behavior, on the one hand, andstandardized, large-scale infrastructures constituting thesetting of the service provision, on the other. As previouslymentioned, the housing companies have traditionally beendrawing on expertise in order to define and develop housingestate programs and to accommodate societal goals regard-ing housing standards and hygiene, economic development,social inclusion and integration, and democracy. There hasbeen an explicit assumption that housing is capable of shap-ing society in a desirable way by influencing behavior andsocial life (this is one of the main arguments for the largepublic housing sector) and, by implication, this means thatindividual heterogeneity is played down. Thus, it is rather thesubsumed citizen of the welfare state than the sovereigncustomer of marketing discourse that is embedded in thephysical structure of housing.

The disciplinary sources drawn on have shifted over theyears, following societal trends. Ideals of social engineeringduring the 1950s were eventually replaced by a technicallogic of efficient production that culminated in the early1970s, while urban planning, sustainability thinking, andarchitectural theory (in particular retro-functionalism) cur-rently seem to be the dominant sources of influence (cf.Ramberg, 2000). Since the housing stock is accumulative, thisdevelopment is clearly visible in the housing estates of thedifferent decades. If ‘technology is society made durable’(Latour, 1991: 103), this will definitely also hold true forhousing infrastructures and the societal ideals they express.

Unlike housing, mass-transit services like those offered bya Metro system are produced and consumed in tightly inte-grated processes, with the customer not only being presentduring, but also actively involved in, operations. Even asimple trip across town requires the customer to plan thejourney, acquire a ticket (maybe by using a vendingmachine), stand in line with other customers, board andalight from the vehicle, etc. Facilitating an efficient service

Marketing discourse and organizational practice 239

process, in particular during peak hours, is thus pivotal andgreat efforts have been made to design stations in a way thatguides and controls customer behavior. Their layout is mark-edly influenced by industrial assembly lines, enabling andencouraging the continuous throughput of passengers. Infact, the only thing that is allowed to stop the flow ofpassengers is the validation gate (the Metro in Stockholmis a so-called closed system where tickets are validated onentry):

The gates [for passengers using trolleys and wheelchairs]at station X do not open automatically for those with avalid travel card so we have to push a button which seemsunnecessary and is a source of irritation. (Metro stationattendant)

Stations are also designed to minimize customer interac-tions with staff in favor of automated gates and informationdisplays, with the personal service that is available beingoffered via a PA system and through safety-glass at ticketbooths, thus encouraging brief, efficient, and focused inter-actions structured in accordance with the logic of the serviceprocess. Taken together, the impression of the Metro servicesystem is that it is designed to frame the traveler as anintegrated component of an efficient service system, ratherthan as a sovereign customer to be served. Although thisefficiency might very well be exactly what the customerprefers in this particular case, the fact remains that thesetting itself expresses a customer quite different from the(inter)active, self-aware individual of marketing discourse.

Discussion

This study has indicated several discrepancies between thecustomer of marketing discourse and the customer actuallybeing translated into organizational practice. This seemsespecially important when it comes to the fundamentaldiscursive notion of matching customer needs, customerofferings, and organizational activities in a coherent andunidirectional chain (cf. Deming, 1986; Webster, 2009).Instead, enactment of the customer expresses conditionsin and around the organizations in a way that, at least inpart, subsumes the customer into these conditions. Thischallenges the functional rationality prescribed by marketingdiscourse (i.e. the supremacy of the exogenous customerover organizational factors), but also the primacy of dis-course over practice that is characteristic of the Foucauldiantradition.

To develop the former challenge further, the enactment ofthe customer described in the previous section will be dis-cussed in the light of two different translational principles: asa reduction of the complexities of tenants/travelers and as areflection of the conditions already present within the orga-nization. The consequences of this for the customer in dis-course and practice are then elaborated on.

The reduced customer

As inmost services, consumption and company operations aretightly interdependent in the two industries as they arelinked together by interactions, operative and technicalconditions, and geographical circumstances. For the compa-

nies, it is necessary to manage these interdependencies andconceptualize them in a way that is meaningful both locallyand in relation to the general conceptions of rational orga-nizations (cf. Brunsson & Sahlin-Andersson, 1997). Throughthe idea of the customer, marketing discourse offers a meansof framing and structuring the hedonic and potentially irra-tional consumer in a way such as this (cf. Bell, 1976; Gabriel &Lang, 1995; Korczynski and Ott, 2004; Morgan, 2003). Withinthe framework of a customer relationship, it becomes clearwhat the customer wants, and whether or not the companyhas been able to supply it.

An important precondition for making this possible is thatthe customer of discourse is contextually underdetermined,i.e. although the prominence of the customer is forcefullypromoted, her exact nature and wishes are left open tointerpretation within a sanctioned framework of understand-ing. Customers are supposed to have needs and preferences,but their exact content is not specified. Instead, they are tobe investigated by the customer-oriented organizations. Inother words, the customer is subjected to observation andanalysis in accordance with established procedures of mar-keting discourse that provide a framework for what a cus-tomer is that can be filled with situational data. Whentenants and travelers are referred to as customers, theyare thus turned into open objects of managerial knowledge(cf. Knorr Cetina, 1997, 1999), something which, while notdefinitely defined (nor ontologically fixed), neverthelesspossesses managerial meaning because it can be investi-gated, reformulated, and interpreted on the basis of newand/or old knowledge.

The use of the pre-specified surveys referred to above is acase in point: As the customer is transformed into numericalvalues in terms of well-defined and industry-relevant dimen-sions, ‘‘listening to the customer’’ becomes an almostmechanical exercise of adjusting performance levels acrossthe service system. This is so because, when aspects of thecomplex and elusive consumer are translated into marketingconcepts like ‘‘product needs’’ and ‘‘satisfaction’’, these arethen disentangled from their intricate embeddedness (Cal-lon, 1998) and reframed within a rational (even measurable)and discursively sanctioned formulation of organizationalreality, and thus rendered comprehensible and manageable.

The projected customer

The constructed customer is not only a simplification of acomplex factor of the companies’ task environment, how-ever. The cases show how the customer of discourse has beenenacted through a rather free translation process, markedlyinfluenced by contextual conditions. At the housing compa-nies, the stereotypical customer is framed by the long-termnature of housing consumption, leading to an emphasis onadjustments and adaptations (the above-mentioned systemsfor ordering maintenance and refurbishment being one con-crete example of this). Public transport, on the other hand, ischaracterized by recurrent, low-involvement customer inter-actions that bring issues of intuitive convenience during theservice encounter to the forefront when the customer andher needs are to be defined. Naturally, such conveniencecould benefit the passenger as well but, more importantly,this is a way of further rationalizing the passenger’s partici-

240 M. Fellesson

pation in, and contribution to, the production process. Thediscursive customer is thus enrolled in the pursuit of opera-tive efficiency.

The customer is, in other words, enacted in a way thatreflects an understanding of the consumer from the com-pany’s own point of view, rather than any ‘‘true’’ nature ofpassengers/tenants. In fact, concerning tenants, housingresearch clearly indicates that people relate to housing quitedifferently fromwhat follows from the subject position of thecustomer being offered by marketing discourse (cf. Clark &Dieleman, 1996; Tognoli, 1987; Fellesson, 2001, 2003). Simi-larly, ethnographic studies of travel behavior and the mean-ing of travel in everyday life show a far more complex picturethan what follows from being a public transport customer(Kellerman, 2006; Vilhelmson, 1999).

What the sovereign customer of marketing discourseoffers instead is a means of ascribing consumers a meaningfuland manageable role by projecting organizational conditionsonto them, and thereby integrating them into the manageriallogic of the organization. Framed as a customer and trans-lated through customer technologies, the consumer is thusendowed with rational agency as well as being systematicallysubsumed into the rational (albeit customer-oriented) orga-nization (Hasselbladh & Bejerot, 2007).

The customer as situated discourse

Crucial in making this possible is the open and undeterminednature of the customer of discourse. As an open object ofknowledge, the customer is constructed through processes ofinvestigation, learning, and interpretation. It is a key argu-ment in Foucauldian approaches to discourse analysis thatsuch processes tend to constitute the ‘epistemic subject’(i.e. those who investigate) in as much as the ‘objects’ (thatwhich is being investigated). A classic example is how thediscourse of psychiatric illness produces both patients andmedical professionals (Foucault, 2006). Similarly, construct-ing the customer thus encompasses a search/learning processwhereby the actors at the companies explore and define notonly their surroundings, but also their identities and organi-zational activities. The ‘sovereign’ position vis-a-vis theorganization ascribed to the customer bymarketing discoursemakes this search process crucial from a power/knowledgepoint of view since it naturalizes certain interests by framingthem as customer demands. As the customer is constructed incertain ways, certain organizational subject positions andinterests are promoted and legitimized at the expense ofothers.

While elements key to marketing discourse, e.g. neo-liberal notions of calculative agency and market exchange,are certainly influential in the very conditions of customerknowledge production, i.e. in the methods, concepts, andexplanatory models used, the situated enactment and inter-pretation of the customer provides considerable space forcontextualization as well as alternative and partially com-peting discursive programs. The result is a customer whoexpresses not only current trends in contemporary society,but also the conditions, tensions, and contradictions alreadyembedded in and around organizations.

In particular, the large-scale infrastructure systems pre-sent in the two industries (and their associated requirements

regarding economies of scale) give rise to tensions that arereflected both in the customers as epistemic objects and inthe epistemic subjects under study, the customer-orientedorganizations and their members. Embedding these tensionsin the very construction of the customer is one way of dealingwith them practically, as it formulates the paradoxes in termsthat can be balanced and prioritized, i.e. managed. Forexample, by operationalizing service dimensions into satis-faction items and eventually satisfaction scores in customersurveys, even contradictions such as personal service versusefficiency at the metro station or maintenance versus lowerrents in public housing can be brought together and handledin a legitimized way.

Conclusions

By focusing on the concrete enactment of the customerthrough various means (organizational rhetoric, administra-tive technologies, and physical facilities), the present studyhas illustrated how ideas of the customer that are key tomarketing discourse have indeed influenced organizationalpractice in public housing and public transport. However, inorganizational practice (as embodied in organizational rheto-ric, operational procedures and physical resources), thecustomer emerges as a rather contradictory figure. Althoughthe sovereignty ascribed to the customer by marketing dis-course is present, there are also plenty of examples of thecustomer being subsumed into organizational conditions.

The study contributes to a theoretical understanding ofthe organizational enactment of the customer by bringingforward the dual function of reduction and projection exer-cised when the customer of discourse is translated andenacted. When practice is studied, the customer emergesas a flexible resource to draw on in order to reinterpret,legitimize, and make sense of local conditions, rather than asan expression of an imposed structure of power/knowledge.The imperative capacity of discourse is thus called intoquestion, and a more dynamic relationship between dis-course and practice is indicated. The customer of marketingdiscourse is integrated into organizational practice as astructuring device that is simultaneously both discursivelyestablished and locally adapted. The discursive indetermi-nacy that ensues from the marketing-customer being an openobject of managerial knowledge is central to this relation-ship.

When it comes to the two industries studied, it has beennoted that the customer is enacted in a way that helps inretaining and re-legitimizing established values in and aroundthe organizations. This does not mean that marketing dis-course is without influence; matching the discursive custo-mer idea with the actions of organizational practice hascertainly changed both the latter and the former (cf. Czar-niawska & Joerges, 1996). These changes have not entailedcomplete acceptance of the discursive customer, however.Instead, discourse has informed and inspired the gradualdevelopment of existing practice within the organizations,particularly when it comes to the dilemmas of flexibility andefficient large-scale service solutions that both industries arefacing.

The present study has shown that the relationshipbetween marketing discourse and marketing practice is more

Marketing discourse and organizational practice 241

complex and less one-directional than is often assumed inboth managerial and critical texts. Further studies whichempirically and conceptually seek to investigate the linksbetween marketing ideas and marketing action are thereforecalled for. Such studies could either take departure in dis-course, by questioning the hegemonic aspirations embeddedin marketing discourse itself, or in practice, where theimpact of customer ideas (not necessarily on action couldbe deliberately search for.

The present study is limited in its empirical scope as it onlyencompasses two ‘‘public’’ industries. Studying how custo-mers are enacted in situations where their existence isalready naturalized is likely to produce additional insights,not least when it comes to the relative importance of internaland external factors. Further, such studies are likely toincrease our understanding of how marketing-as-practice isrelated to markets-as-practice (cf. Cochoy, 1998; Kjellberg &Helgesson, 2007).

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