In their book titled, Managing Customers as Investments: The Strategic Value of Customers in the Long Run (Wharton School Publishing), authors Sunil Gupta and Donald R. Lehmann offer practical examples and case studies to help companies estimate the lifetime value of their customers. That information, the authors suggest, can then be used to make better strategic decisions about customer acquisition, service, retention and segmentation. Knowledge@Wharton has excerpted a section of the book below.
If you walk into Stew Leonard's, a unique grocery store on the East Coast of the United States, you will probably notice a sign engraved in stone. This sign, which represents the company's philosophy and is meant as much for its employees as its customers, highlights two rules. It reads, "Rule #1: The Customer Is Always Right. Rule #2: If the Customer Is Ever Wrong, Re-Read Rule #1."
A focus on customers is not unique to this company. For years, managers all over the world have reiterated the need to focus on customers, provide them good value, and improve customer satisfaction. In fact, metrics such as customer satisfaction and market share have become so predominant that many companies not only track them regularly but also reward their employees based on these measures.
However, this kind of customer focus misses one important component -- the value of a customer to a company. Effective customer-based strategies take into consideration the two sides of customer value -- the value that a firm provides to a customer and the value of a customer to the firm. This approach recognizes that providing value to a customer requires marketing investment and that the firm must recover this investment. In other words, this approach combines the traditional marketing view, where the customer is king, with the finance view, where cash is king.
This chapter describes how a strategy that focuses on the two sides of customer value differs from traditional marketing strategy.
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