Customer Lifetime Value — The Path to Profitability
By V. Kumar, J. Mack Robinson College of Business, Georgia State University, USA, vk@gsu.edu
Abstract
This survey talks about Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) as a metric that would help managers make informed usiness decisions. While there have been prior articles that take an extensive and in-depth look at Customer Equity (CE)(Villanueva and Hanssens, 2007), this survey reviews the CLV metric in particular. The definition and approaches to compute CLV and the concept of customer equity are discussed in detail. Specifically, this survey provides methods for measuring CLV, the strategies for developing customer-centric strategies, the implementation of CLV strategies in a B2B and B2C setting, and the challenges faced by an organization in implementing a CLV-based framework. This survey details the importance of CLV as a metric in a marketer's toolkit and how it is relevant to managing customers.
Customer Lifetime Value
Customer Lifetime Value - The Path to Profitability reviews the CLV metric in particular. Approaches to computing CLV and the concept of customer equity are discussed in detail. Specifically, this monograph provides the methods of measuring CLV, the strategies for developing customer-centric strategies, the implementation of CLV strategies in a B2B and B2C setting, and the challenges faced by an organization in implementing a CLV-based framework. The author details the importance of CLV as a metric in a marketer's toolkit and how it is relevant to managing customers. Customer Lifetime Value - The Path to Profitability answers the following questions: What is the value of a customer? Can customers be evaluated based only on their past contribution to the firm? Which metric is better in identifying the future worth of the customer? These are the questions a firm has to deal with before assessing the value of its customers. The author shows that the value of a customer is the value the customer brings to the firm over their lifetime. Therefore, we need a metric that can objectively measure future profitability of the customer to the firm. Customer lifetime value (CLV) helps managers make informed business decisions.
