Conceptualising 'Value for the Customer': An Attributional, Structural and Dispositional Analysis

"Value for the customer (VC) is any demand-side, personal perception of advantage arising out of a customer’s association with an organisation’s offering…"

This paper provides a comprehensive taxonomy of how customers perceive and interpret value. It identifies multiple forms of value — from balancing benefits and sacrifices to outcomes from use and price comparisons — and explains how these perceptions influence satisfaction, choice, and competitive positioning.

Woodall’s framework distinguishes between value as a ratio (benefits vs. costs), value as an experience (derived from use), value as an outcome (net result), and value as a perception (subjective judgement). This multi-dimensional view is essential for customer success teams seeking to understand what “value” actually means to different customers in different contexts.