When motorists want one thing, but national policies are driving vehicle manufacturers to offer less of it, that risks the prosperity of the UK motor industry and the people who work within it, argues AM's regular columnist Professor Jim Saker, emeritus professor of Loughborough University's business school and president of the Institute of the Motor Industry.

Go to any motor industry conference, product launch or training programme and there is always an exhortation for the people involved to be customer centric. By keeping the customer central to all that we do success is guaranteed to follow.

This is pushed out as a mantra for how the industry should behave.

To support and reinforce this a set of metrics are imposed that supposedly measure how customer centric the business is over a period of time.

I have always been puzzled by why this measurement is necessary, if the premise is correct surely the long-term success of the organisation would be a sufficient indicator.