"Customerization" is undermining U.S.

• Position: YOUR LIFE; public relations models

Treating groups such as students, patients, and religious followers as "customers" is having a serious negative impact on U.S. schools, hospitals, churches, media, and government, according to James G. Hutton, associate professor of marketing and entrepreneurial studies, Fairleigh Dickinson University, Madison, N.J., and author of The Feel-Good Society.

"Every parent, teacher, policymaker, and leader should be concerned about the impact that 'customerization' is having on American institutions and on Americans because the effects are much more profound than most people realize."

Hutton explains that the idea of being a customer has tremendous intuitive appeal to most because that implies greater accountability. "Unfortunately," he notes, "when institutions like schools, hospitals, and churches treat their students, patients, and members as customers, the result is almost the opposite--those institutions almost inevitably begin to pander to their audiences, becoming more responsive, but to the wrong things. They lose sight of their basic mission and ultimately become less accountable."

In education, for example, Hutton's research indicates that axioms such as "keeping the customer happy," and "the customer is always right" lead to a variety of problems, including a lack of discipline, a dumbing down of standards, cheating and other forms of dishonesty, social promotion of underqualified students, out-of-control grade inflation, a focus on self-esteem rather than character-building, and a tendency to tell students what will make them happy rather than what will make them educated.

In the health care arena, Hutton maintains that...